alys:
the goal might need to be modified so that instead of tracking time on dealing with a backlog, it’s for tracking time dealing with the day’s most urgent task, and when there’s nothing more urgent than the backlog, that’s when you do the backlog.
That’s exactly what I said, isn’t it? I do the urgent task when it’s there, and when there’s nothing more urgent, I do the backlog.
alys:
if you do want to keep a goal for reducing your email backlog, that must be an important activity for you. Ideally, important activities wouldn’t be pushed aside to get something urgent done because that can lead to the important activities also becoming urgent or just not getting done at all (that’s one way that backlogs are created). If an urgent task prevents you doing your 15 minutes of email backlog, one option to consider is finding those 15 minutes somewhere else in the day so that you can still record a datapoint for actually working on the backlog
The problem is that the backlog is just one example. I have a dozen more taking up like 6 hours every day. They’re all important tasks but I don’t actually want to do them every day.
What do you think of this:
So I had a bunch of daily goals that were all due at the end of the day. The problem with this was that I put them all off until the last minute, and then couldn’t do them all.
So I set up a Waterfall, so they’re staggered throughout the day.