Before holiday break we had some movement in our team that resulted in shifting of responsibilities for a lot of Dave’s staff.
In addition to my Analytics responsibilities, I was also handed a sizeable project that Ron had been managing involving transferring a business function to a new location. Great opportunity to flex my little-used project management muscles.
As the project took shape I realized that my current method of organization (read: none) wasn’t cutting it, and that I would have to make some changes in order to keep on top of multiple deadlines, deliverables, stakeholders, etc.
Here’s where Backpack and GTD come in. (checking out those links keeps me from having to explain what those are)
I took some of what Russell Quinn blogged about recently at his blog, and some of my own findings about how I spend my time, and came up with a system that will help me stay on track. Between this, and the GTD-based principle of inbox zero, I should be able to spend less time trying to think of what to do next, and more time doing what’s next.
Similar to Russell’s method, everything that needs to get organized is dumped into an inbox throughout the day. Then when I have down time, or at day’s end, I organize the inbox into projects and tasks in Backpack.
The Getting Things Done principles come into play in how the project and task pages are maintained. Focus goes from things that have to be done today, down to this week, down to this month, and out from there. Each of these groups has to be reviewed daily to make sure that priorities are preserved.
I’m still working on it, but it has helped this week. The big trick will be sticking with it when things get busy.
