Thoughts about Time Management

Now that we live in a time where many project-driven jobs have been forced out of their natural habitat (i.e. home office), one might more than ever ask oneself, „how do I get the most out of my day?“ This is especially interesting when coordination within a team can not happen ad hoc – as it would be possible in an open office environment – but has to fit into every involved one‘s schedule.

So, maybe, within these constraints, it is helpful to remind oneself of some key principles of how humans and their tasks interact with each other. The following compilation of ideas is largely based on fragments acquired by the author and is in no way fresh, groundbreaking research in any field 😉

1. Parkinson‘s Law and Time Boxes.

Sounding like absolutely commonplace knowledge, it is often circulated that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” (originally published in 1955). This can be understood by acknowledging that the human mind usually is quite capable of abstraction and, therefore, of solving hypothetical problem statements… given one task, one can find an arbitrary level of depth of sub-tasks and scent out complications between them; all of which stands in the very way of what one might call one‘s claim for „perfection“, whatever that means.

In theory, however, this tendency can be confined somewhat by thinking of any task to only live in a static, smallest-possible „Time Box“. This aims at removing the buffer resources (or „cushions“) around any single task. By defining such a Time Box by first using words that are easy to grasp,and secondly allocating the minimum amount of time one can barely imagine, one can prevent his or her mind from wandering off into these depths of abstraction (e.g. to „make my home great again“ could involve several complicated and hitherto unknown steps, but to „empty the trash bins in 10 minutes“ feels quite palpable, even if it‘s only a minor aspect of the overall picture).

For singular tasks that need to be split up over several Time Boxes, one might use the idea of the „pomodoro technique“ as a guidance, which estimates that productive, uninterrupted work can usually happen in time intervals of about 25 minutes. In any way, the typical length of a work day should be booked out by timeslots completely, as any addition of a „buffer zone“ will probably directly calm the mind in any preceding Time Box („relax, I don‘t have to respect the end of my Time Box that much, that‘s what the cushions are for“). It might even be preferable to book out the whole work week in advance.

The point in all these is not that one can always manage to fulfil one‘s Time Box, but to give a quick and emotional feedback to the mind: „Stay focused or postpone the current Time Box, but don‘t enter a state of limbo in which you feel like working on the issue at hand, but actually create new tasks, and with impunity.“ On the other hand, if one manages to calibrate the Time Box duration to its projected task, one can very well thrive on the motivation resulting from finishing this task, amplifying focus in a most natural way. Leading over…

2. „Eat the Frog“.

The completion of a task usually leads to one of several effects: As mentioned above, one can feel a motivational push and immediate drive to tackle the next problem; or, however, it can lead to a temporary deflation due to the nearing-the-end-of-time-box-stress relief. Also, some tasks might feel so in routine, that they don‘t lead to excitement or fatigue at all. Either way, it‘s nearly impossible for anyone to predict at 9 am in which state of mind he/she is at 3 am. The key in upholding a certain level of progress, then, is to schedule the most off-putting item at the very beginning of every undertaking. It holds both in a general sense of „Risk First“, i.e. „tackle the problem that is potentially hardest to contain first“, and on a daily basis, i.e. „start your day with the most annoying problem (the most sluggish blocker)“. This is described by metaphorically eating a frog (indeed, it‘s a metaphor – it won‘t really help you if you actually devour one).

Solving the „Maximum Risk Time Box“ first has the advantage, that if the the project already unexpectedly starts to go awry in this stage, there still is plenty of time to communicate with one‘s customer, to outsource some duties to other contributors or to generally refine the original vision of the schedule. Of course, the whole point of Time Boxes is not just to put on artificial pressure for its own sake; but to lay out a road map to any given goal – just as when hiking, the need for some re-orientation is usually not to be seen problematic, if it is identified early enough.

Additionally, going to tackle the „Most annoying Thing of the Day“ first, can add some pleasure of feeling some progress early on any given day. Now that the disgusting frog has been eaten out of the way, you can view any other given task of the day as a comparatively low-threshold obstacle, being easier to put on your plate, easier to digest (it‘s still a metaphor). Furthermore, you can actually measure the progress in the superordinate picture by logging the progress of successfully eaten daily frogs.

To be continued…

Of course, such conceptions aren‘t very good advice if they don‘t align well with a specific project or the general psychology of their bearer. You might still need to flexibly adjust time for interruptions (e.g. video calls), and there are still many complications in which future tasks depend on the result of present tasks, so don‘t waste too much time trying to devise the perfect vision of Time Boxes and Frogs-To-Be-Eaten. With enough practice, however, this mindest can very well be useful in giving some feedback of accomplishment back to the architect.

I‘ll keep you updated when some undeniable drawbacks catch my eye.