Howard Winter wrote:
>> It seems to me that any project or individual task can be described in 
>> terms
>> of duration, flexibility, importance, and urgency.
>
> I think there are other factors that need to be taken into account: 
> granularity, and delegatability.  Some
> things really need to be done at one hit, with no interruptions, usually 
> because you are carrying a whole pile
> of things in your mind at once, and you don't want to lose them by having 
> to think of something else.

You are absolutely right. I noticed too that even small interruptions cause 
me to lose focus. I remember that someone talk about a certain company 
[citation needed], which found that giving each of their programmers their 
own office (with a door) results in higher productivity. The logic was, it 
reduces the temptation to interrupt another programmer's thought process to 
ask a basic question (just because someone's too lazy to Google the answer).

> If a
> task is like this, block off a time to do it, shut the door (if any) and 
> put up a "Do Not Disturb" sign, and
> redirect your phone.  Items like this can be moves as an entity, but once 
> started need to be finished.
> Schedule these first, based on the characteristics you list above.

Your comments were an inspiration for this sign which I now post on my door 
from time to time:

http://www.maksimov.org/graphics/open_in_case_of_emergency.pdf

> You don't say if you can delegate any of your work to others.

Yes, I can. Managing others is my primary responsibility, therefore this 
topic is of much interest to me.

> If so, you need to decide which things you
> *must* do yourself, and which can be delegated. Unfortunately this 
> sometimes means delegating interesting
> stuff - which is a shame, but it has to be done if you are going to get 
> everything finished!  I find it's
> useful having a small pile of relatively simple, relatively short, 
> independant jobs that you can hand out to
> people who run out of work, to save you having to drop everything to find 
> them something to do, giving you
> time to give them something more meaty without it impacting your own 
> schedule.

It's a great idea. I've been doing something like this already -- I have a 
page at the front of the planner where I write things that I can delegate to 
others.

> I once did a time management course where they said that everything should 
> be prioritised using importance and
> urgency - I think this is far too simplistic, and you find yourself adding 
> the other characteristics to get a
> realistic way to schedule things.

Sure, it's simplistic -- but the model does have its uses, especially to 
people who are new to project management. If you prioritize using only 
importance and urgency, you are better off than if you didn't use any system 
at all.

> I have never found any diary / scheduling / project management software 
> that would do the job satisfactorily
> without a lot of manual tweaking to get sensible answers.  I think the 
> problem is rather too complex, and too
> little understood by the people developing the software.  (I once had 
> quite a set-to with Lotus about
> Organizer, trying to get them to add a couple of features and improve some 
> existing ones so that it could be
> used for group scheduling, which it was supposed to do, but they couldn't 
> see the point, and dismissed my
> suggestions, making it useless for the job).

Theoretically though, it's possible -- right? :)

Well-written software, provided with sufficient data, should be able to 
schedule tasks without human intervention. And it seems to me that the 
benefit you would get from such scheduling system would be greater than the 
work required to input the data and to keep it up-to-date.

I like your concept of granularity, now it seems so obvious that it's 
strange that most programs do not utilize it. There are some tasks that 
consist of sub-tasks which are not necessarily interdependent, but should be 
done "at one hit" to minimize overhead and increase productivity.

> Oh, and when planning ahead never schedule more than 80% of your time, ...

Good advice!

> ... unless you have only one thing to do
> and no way for the outside world to contact you!

I wish! :D

Best regards,

Vitaliy 

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