The past couple months at work, I have had the feeling I was missing something important. My student services position requires attending to numerous levels of detail simultaneously. While I am responding to questions about registration from any one of my 170 doctoral students, I am also making preparations for a retreat five months out and following the progress of a student in Rwanda who needs to graduate by summer 2014. Is it any wonder I have the sense something is slipping through the cracks?
Like any moderately organized person, I keep several task lists handy. Twice a week, the latest incarnation of the to-do list lands, fresh and clean, on new paper. My calendar is detailed, my co-workers keep me on track, and the school's other administrators are very good about sending out reminders (we do work with teaching faculty, after all). Even with all these tools, my own work still seemed to be getting away from me.
The challenge is striking a balance between short-term and long-term projects. So many items demand immediate attention. Or, at least, they seem to. Inquiries from colleagues and students take up the bulk of my day. I spend a great deal of time clarifying program requirements and procedures in person, by email, and by phone. These responses come easily to me now that I've been soaking it up for the past eight months. However, anything reliant on a focused mind, like research, writing, and development of presentations, keeps returning to the bottom of the list. Unfinished.
Last week, I read an article in by Daniel Pink in The Telegraph about creating a To-Don't List. "It's only by taking away what doesn't matter, " he argues, "that allows us to reveal what does matter." Being busy is not the same as being disciplined. The first item on Pink's To-Don't list? This gem:
Don't answer email during peak morning writing hours.
This one hit home. My typical workday strategy is an outgrowth of habits I developed during my earliest professional experiences. When I staffed a shelter for homeless families sixteen years ago, I started each morning by checking the previous evening's notes, seeing what items lingered, checking voicemails to find out if any families out on the street needed an intake, and preparing the schedule for the next 24 hours. The shelter was my first workplace out of college, and I stayed in the position, repeating the same routine, for three and a half years. That approach to tackling a day at the office became my professional modus operandi. I have muddled along with it, with moderate success, in a variety of positions.
This means the prime, high-octane morning hours are dedicated to mundane tasks. The slogging, interrupted afternoon hours are left for the creative work. It makes no sense. Why use premium fuel for mowing the lawn?
Time to flip the day on its head.
On Thursday afternoon before leaving the office, I split the to-do list, creating two: one for the lingering administrative tasks and one for the long-term projects. I also carved out ten minutes to write in my work journal about the presentation project I would be tackling the next morning. When I arrived on Friday, I had a clean desk, a clear task, and notes to get me started.
I still scanned my email first thing. If anything urgent needed my attention, I could handle it and not be worrying about missing something. I only answered one email. Then I put on BBC classical stream, pulled out my notebook, and got cracking.
Ninety minutes later, I had flesh on the skeleton of a presentation I had been avoiding for weeks. Digging through articles, my mind was able to read with precision and notice connections I would usually have missed. During that time, the phone did not ring once and only one person popped into my office. I completed 75% of a project not due until May 25th. In my previous work style, I would have attended to this presentation for five or ten minutes every few afternoons, and still only been 25% done the day before I needed to deliver it.
By subtracting one task, I had tripled my productivity.
Every office has its own unique culture. It had not occurred to me to observe and reflect upon the dynamics at play here before choosing an approach to my position. This is a graduate school, which means most of the people I serve and with whom I collaborate are faculty members who teach at night, and doctoral students who work during the day and take classes at night. The place buzzes to life in the early afternoon. The hours after lunch are an ideal window for meetings, correspondence, phone calls, and drop-ins. The activity level during the low-energy time can keep a person awake and hopping.
In the morning hours, in contrast, the building is a quiet little den of contemplation. The few professors in the building during that time are holed up in their own offices, concentrating hard on research and writing. Why not plug into that power source and enhance my own performance?
It seems removing this one task from my list had done more than subtract a few emails and add one presentation. By Friday afternoon, that lingering sense of unease had vanished. Into the space remaining flowed satisfaction and even a little of pride. Now that's my kind of math.
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