Using a Planner Part 4

I haven't actually used this technique since I'm still formulating it. I just want to describe the idea and maybe, by putting it down in words, I might come up with something.

When I receive a long term goal, I need to track my progress. That's because my boss wants to be informed of how far along I am in achieving the goal. When we talk about the goal, he's always asking what I've done so far, what I still need to do and, the really vague part, how many percent complete is the job.

How can I say, with some certainty, how many percent along I am in completing the job? In my case, it's always been a guess and my boss has usually accepted my guesses at face value. Sometimes, however, after saying it's 75% complete, I get a thrashing of sorts when the job takes several months to actually complete. It's kinda difficult to answer the question, "How could it take three months to finish the last 25% of the job?"

So, I needed to come up with a progress tracking method. Outlook's Task List has a feature where you can choose the percent complete. It's just an drop-down box where you can choose the percentage. That's' nice but it doesn't help you determine what number to choose. So, here's how I'm planning to do it:

I plan to cut up each task into five to ten steps or mini-tasks. In our office, we call these "milestones."

Let's say you have a task that says, "Organize a meeting for the team at the Neville Hotel on March 22, 2012."

You breakdown the task into a list of steps or mini-tasks. One such list might be:

1. Obtain the list of people who need to be a the meeting.
2. Call/Visit the Neville Hotel and ask for a reservation for a function room.
3. Inform all attendees about the meeting.
4. Two days before the meeting, remind everyone about the meeting.
5. Attend the meeting.

Since I have five steps, I can allot each step a 20% value. When I finish Step 1, I put 20% on the % Complete box. When I finish Step 2, I increase the % Complete to 40% and so on. When Step 5 is finished, I put 100%. Don't mind the Status box. As soon as you put a value more than 0% into the % Complete, the Status will be updated to "In Progress." When the value is 100%, it automatically becomes "Completed."

You don't have to evenly divide 100% into your number of steps. In the example above, you can put 10% for Step 1, 50% for Step 2, 70% for Step 3, 90% for Step 4, and 100% for Step 5. It depends on you if you want to assign a bigger or smaller percentage to a step.

Well, I guess that's it for this series. I hope someone finds something useful for themselves here. Let's keep those tasks rolling.

Using a Planner Part 1

Almost didn't get to make my scheduled entry. My eight-year old daughter had been asking to use the computer for some time but I kept putting her off. She quietly sat beside me, waiting patiently, watching what I was doing. Then she put her head on my shoulder and that's when I caved in. I let her play her Tetris for an hour or so.

What I wanted to share this week was on using a planner. At the office, I use Microsoft Outlook's Task List and Calendar. When I first used the Task List, it was just a list of jobs. It quickly became such a long list that I despaired of ever finishing anything. Add a boss who insisted on my doing multiple things at the same time and you'd have a formula for stress. I either needed a lesson in time management or organizing my work.

I thought of using the internet to find a planner that I could load into my cellphone and use to organize things. Thus far, I have been unsuccessful. In my search, however, I found several articles on time management. One in particular gave me such a clear idea of what to do that I decided to use it. The webpage is http://www.time-management-success.com/daily-planners.html and after about a week, I finally got the hang of it.

The essence of using a planner is to put a buffer on your jobs. They mentioned a book, "Do It Tomorrow" by Mark Forster. Unfortunately, I'm a little cash-strapped so I am unable to buy the book for now. The article did, however, describe the essentials.

Before I get to the essence, I think I'll describe how I did things before.

I mentioned that I had a list of jobs in Outlook's Task List. When someone asked me to do something or I thought of something that needed to be done, I put it on the list. Unfortunately, that's all I did. I just put it on the list.

Everyday, I'd choose an item from the list and work on it. If I finished it, I marked the task as complete and it would disappear from the active list. If I didn't, the task would stay on the list, unchanged. I didn't use reminders, I didn't write anything about status or even when I expected or intended to finish the job. It was just a list.

A lot of times, I didn't even put a job on the list. When I received a job to do and it was urgent, I did it right away without putting it on the list. If I finished it, I'd have no record of it. If I didn't finish it and still didn't put it on the list, it's almost a sure thing that I'd forget it.

Another problem was choosing which job to do first. I'd pick one at random or if I thought it was easy or can be finished quickly. If someone follow up on a job, I'd drop what I was doing and pick up his request. No attempt at negotiation or anything. It was all haphazard and confusing. It was also driving me crazy.

So here came the article and I decided to try it out.

Next week, I'll tell you how it it went. Furthermore, by next week, I'd have learned a few more things and I can add those too.