⇥ Old school task management

Nothing beats paper for personal task management (except, possibly, your spouse)

The biggest lesson in user interface design that I have ever received is, to this day, a little something that happened approximately eleven years ago.

At the time, I remember standing in the headquarters lobby of one of Canada’s largest insurance companies, uncomfortable—as I always am—in my suit, right next to my CEO. We were waiting for a meeting with the company’s CIO that we had tried to schedule for two months. We were prepared; we were early enough to show that the meeting mattered to us, but not so early that we would look desperate. We were ready.

Unfortunately, our host wasn’t. The receptionist informed us, politely but with that condescending look of someone who has seen far too many supplicants make far too many sales calls, that the CIO wasn’t expecting us today and wouldn’t be seeing us after all.

My colleague—a person who could teach anyone business smarts simply by standing next to them for a short period of time—decided that we hadn’t donned our best suits, driven through that particular brand of hell that city dwellers jokingly refer to as “traffic” and spent $30 in parking to be brushed off so easily. “He doesn’t know my cell number… I bet if I call his direct line he will answer¹,” he stated.

That sounded good to me—I had paid the $30—so I opened up my Cassiopeia and started looking for the guy’s phone number. I was pretty good with that little device—and I never got tired of showing it off (much like an iPhone until a few months ago, it made for an excellent conversation starter at business meetings). It only took me a minute or so to pull up the number and, once I located it, I looked up to dictate it to Rick.

Except, of course, that, while I was deeply busy getting off on electronics, my friends had already whipped out his $2.99 pocket phone book, found the number, called the CIO and very gently tore him a new waste management system. Before I knew what had happened, we were on our way up to the executive floor, and my Cassiopeia was on its way down to the trash.

Fast forward ten years…

Things have changed considerably since that episode (incidentally, the meeting was a bust—I only remember what happened specifically because it had a cathartic effect on my appreciation for ergonomics), but, in many ways, software is still too often a solution in search of a problem.

This is the reason why, even after all this time, I manage all my day-to-day tasks on paper. I’ve tried a number of fancy (and not-so-fancy) task management systems: GTD-compliant systems, OmniFocus, Things, and so on. I’m sure that these applications and methods do wonders for scores of people, but, for some reason, they just don’t work for me.

You see, daily task management is not really about knowing what you need to do; it’s about doing it. A to-do list in any form isn’t going to help you “remember” the things you have to do—let’s face it, you know what you have to do; most of the time, you’re just too lazy to actually do it. Task management software is helpful in keeping track of what you need to do, but it lacks in what I jokingly refer to as the “spouse factor²”—it doesn’t nag you enough about sorting through your tasks and taking care of them.

Paper won’t start calling you in the middle of a client meeting to remind you that you need to pick up the milk on the way back home, but it has two great advantages: first, it’s extremely portable and, second, it cannot be hidden behind another window. Third—yes, I am cheating—it’s as of yet unbeaten as a mind-mapping tool, especially when coupled with that most noble of writing instruments, the pencil.

Task management, old-school style

Managing time is a complex matter. Some people are naturally good at it, while others, well, not so much. I belong to the second category and, therefore, a good management system is essential to get me through the day. For the benefit of inquiring minds, thus, this is how I organize my day:

1. Once proper grooming has taken place and I am sufficiently caffeinated to write something that I will eventually be able to read later, I start working on my to-do list for the day. This usually takes place after I do my morning e-mail triage—just in case there are some truly urgent and unexpected tasks that I need to be aware of.
2. I start by copying over the unhandled items from the previous day. Then, that list goes into the trashcan.
3. Next, I write down whatever new items I need to take care of on that particular day—consulting liberally with my calendar, just in case I forget something.
4. Next, I sort items according to two criteria: urgency and palatability. Urgent tasks need to take precedence, as do those that I’d rather avoid—that way, I have something (the tasks I actually like to do) to look forward to.
5. As I go through the list, I try to find a “daily goal” of sorts—my TDL is usually much longer than my day reasonably allows, and some long-term tasks need to be taken care of daily, regardless of what precedes them. Thus, I further sort tasks between “must do,” “should do” and “can go to tomorrow.”
6. As the day progresses, I erase tasks as I complete them. The erasure is also “old school”—I just scratch a line across the item. That way, it doesn’t automatically disappear—it sticks around as evidence that I have actually done something.
7. At the end of the day, I go through the list one more time to ensure that I haven’t forgotten to take care of some truly urgent tasks. Otherwise, the TDL will tell me what I have accomplished over the course of the day—and the remaining tasks will be there for me to work on tomorrow.

That’s all there is to it. If I need to work outside the office, all I need is a piece of paper and a pen. Best of all, the to-do list is right there, in front of me and at the top of my work pile on the desk. It’s impossible to ignore, even without pop-up notifications and stereo sounds.

How do you manage your time? Much like my obsession with finding out how others organize their desks, I am curious to see if I can learn a trick or two to improve my time management.

¹ Remarkably—even for the time—the person we were visiting didn’t have a secretary, even though he held a C-level position at a major corporation.

² Intended in the most gender-neutral way possible. I am quite sure that husbands can be as annoying as wives, regardless of the gender of their better halves.

Photo credits: My to do list by ezs