In the 20th century, people's lives and work followed a plan. At work (simplifying, one can imagine a factory), individuals had a clear plan for the week, month, and even the year ahead. Simplifying: you needed to produce 20 parts. No one would come and say that now you need to produce 37 parts, and besides that, write an article reflecting on why the shape of these parts is precisely as it is — and preferably, yesterday.
In everyday life, it was roughly the same: a force majeure was a real force majeure. There were no mobile phones, your friend couldn't call you and say, 'please come urgently to help resolve a problem,' you lived in one place for practically your whole life (moving was like a fire), and you would only think about coming to help your parents 'in December for a week.'
Under these conditions, a cultural code was formed where you felt satisfied if you completed all the tasks. And that was truly achievable. Not completing all tasks was considered a deviation from the norm.
Now everything is different. The primary tool of labor has become intellect, and in work processes, you need to utilize it in various capacities. A modern manager (especially a top manager) goes through dozens of different types of tasks throughout the day. Most importantly, one cannot manage the amount of 'incoming messages.' New tasks can cancel old ones, change their priority, or even alter the very formulation of the old tasks. In these conditions, formulating a plan in advance and then executing it step-by-step is practically impossible. You can't respond to an incoming task with 'we have an urgent request from the tax office, we need to respond today, or there will be a penalty' by saying 'I'll schedule it for next week.'
How does one live with this — to have time for life outside of work? And can any work management algorithms be applied in everyday, domestic life? Three months ago, I radically changed my entire task-setting and control system. I want to share how I came to this point and what the outcome has been. The piece will be in two parts: the first — a bit about, if I may say so, the ideology. And the second — entirely about practice.
In my opinion, the problem for us is not that the number of tasks has increased significantly. The issue lies in our socio-cultural code still being attuned to completing "all tasks planned for today." We feel stressed when plans change, we feel anxious when we don’t accomplish everything that was scheduled. Meanwhile, schools and universities continue to operate under the previous code: there is a set curriculum, there are clearly defined homework tasks, and a child develops a mental model that assumes life will continue this way. If we imagine a rigid version of this, in real life, during your English class, they start discussing geography, one class that should be forty minutes takes one and a half hours, a third class gets canceled, and in the fourth class, your mom calls you in the middle of the lesson and urgently asks you to buy and bring home groceries.
This socio-cultural code leads a person to hope that they can change the incoming flow — and it's precisely in this way that they can establish their life, while the life described above is abnormal since it lacks a clear plan.
This is the core issue. We need to acknowledge and accept that we cannot control the number of incoming messages; we can only manage how we react to them and how we process these incoming messages.
There's no need to worry about the continuous influx of requests to change plans: we are no longer working on machines (with rare exceptions), letters don’t take a month to arrive (yes, I’m an optimist), and the landline phone has become an anachronism. Therefore, we need to change the message processing workflow, accept our current life as it is, and realize that the old socio-cultural code no longer works.
What can we do to make things easier? It’s very challenging to "create a good website," but having a clear technical task (or at least a clearer description of the assigned task) makes achieving the right result (and even just achieving some result) significantly simpler.
The best example is my own, so I will try to decompose my desires. It is clear to me that there is a mishap in handling life and work plans: right now, it’s "bad," and I want it to become "good."
What do "bad" and "good" mean at a "high" level of decomposition?
Bad: I feel anxious about my uncertainty in being able to do everything I promised others or myself. I get frustrated that I can't get to tasks I've long planned, as they keep getting postponed either because of urgent tasks or because they are too complicated to approach. I can't engage in everything that interests me, as work and daily life take up most of my time. It's bad that I can't devote time to family and relaxation. An additional point: I'm not in a constant state of context-switching, which largely contributes to everything I mentioned above.
Good: I don't feel anxious because I know what I'll be occupied with in the near future. The absence of this anxiety allows me to spend my free time more productively. I don't experience regular fatigue (the word "constant" doesn't fit for me; it's more about being regular). I don't have to jump around and switch to any incoming communications.
Overall, much of what I described above can be summarized in a simple phrase: "reducing uncertainty and unknowns."
Thus, the technical task becomes something along the lines of:
- Modification of the process for handling incoming tasks — so that context can switch.
- Working with the task management system — so that at least current tasks and ideas aren't forgotten and can be processed eventually.
- Regulating the predictability of tomorrow.
Before changing anything, I need to understand what I can change and what I cannot.
The complex and enormous task is to understand and acknowledge that I cannot change the incoming flow itself, and this flow is a part of my life into which I willingly entered; the advantages of such a life outweigh the disadvantages.
You might want to think at the first level of problem-solving: do you actually want to be in the place in life where you are now, or do you want something different? And if you feel like you want something different, then perhaps you should also work on that with a psychologist/psychoanalyst/therapist/guru/call them whatever names you like — this question is so deep and serious that I won't delve into it here.
So, I am where I am, I like it, I have a company with 100 people (I’ve always wanted to run a business), I’m engaged in interesting work (it’s about interacting with people, including achieving work goals — I’ve always been interested in ‘social engineering’ and technology), the business is built on ‘problem-solving’ (and I’ve always liked being a ‘fixer’), I feel good at home. I enjoy it here, except for the ‘downsides’ listed in the ‘bad’ section.
Given that I enjoy this life, I cannot change (except for delegating tasks, as mentioned below) the incoming flow, but I can change its processing.
How? I am a proponent of the concept that one should start small and work upwards — first solving the most pressing issues with simple changes, and then moving towards larger changes.
All the changes I made can be summarized into three directions; I will list them from simple (for me) changes to complex ones:
1. Processing and saving tasks.
I have never been able (and still can’t) to maintain paper planners properly, writing down and formulating tasks is very challenging for me, and regularly using a task tracker is even harder.
I accepted this, and my main concept was that the tasks I have in my mind are the most important.
My task processing was as follows:
- tasks I remember — do them when I get a moment;
- incoming tasks — if they can be done quickly, handle them immediately upon receipt; if they take time — promise to do them;
- tasks I forgot about — do them only when reminded.
This worked fairly well for some time until ‘forgotten tasks’ became a problem.
The problem manifested in two ways:
- Almost every day, forgotten tasks arrived that needed to be done today (the hardcore aspect that pushed me over the edge — an SMS from the court bailiffs about money being deducted from my accounts for a traffic violation fine just before my flight to the States, and the urgent need to figure out if I would even be allowed to leave).
- A huge number of people find it inappropriate to ask for clarification regarding a request and keep it to themselves. People get upset if you forget something, especially if it's a personal request; if it's a work-related request, it ultimately turns into a fire that needs to be put out today (see point one).
Something had to be done about this.
As unusual as it was for me, I started to record all tasks. Every single one. I was lucky to figure it out myself, but generally, the whole idea resonates well with the concept of .
The first stage was simply unloading all tasks from my head into the simplest system for me. It turned out to be : the interface is very fast, the task creation process is minimal in time, and there is a simple app on the phone (I later switched to Todoist, but more on that in the second, technical part).
Thank goodness I've been involved in IT management for 10 years in one way or another, and I understand that "creating an application" is a doomed task, just like "going to the doctor." So I started breaking tasks down into decomposed tasks in the form of actions.
I clearly understand that I am a person who depends heavily on positive feedback, which in the form of feedback, "look at how much you’ve done today," I can give to myself (if I see it). Therefore, the task “going to the doctor” turns into tasks like “choose which doctor to go to,” “choose a time to see the doctor,” “call and make an appointment.” At the same time, I don’t want to put pressure on myself: each of the tasks can be done on any day of the week, and I can be satisfied that I’ve already completed some stage of the task.
The key point is the decomposition of tasks and recording tasks as short actions.
As long as a task is in your head, and you think you need to perform it someday, you won't be at peace.
If it's also not written down, and you forgot it — you'll suffer when you remember it and realize you forgot.
This applies to all tasks, including mundane ones: leaving for work and remembering on the way that you forgot to take out the trash is not cool at all.
These worries are simply unnecessary. That's why I started recording every single task.
The goal is to train myself to unload all (absolutely all) tasks into any tracker and then move on to stop thinking about recorded tasks in my head.
When you realize that everything you thought you would do is written down and sooner or later you will get to it — personally, this takes away my anxiety.
You stop getting anxious about suddenly remembering in the middle of the day that you wanted to change the light bulbs in the hallway, talk to an employee, or write a document (and you rush to write it).
By minimizing the number of forgotten (in this context, unrecorded) tasks, I minimize the anxiety that arises when I remember these forgotten tasks.
Not everything can be recorded or remembered, but if there used to be 100 such tasks, then at a certain point there are only 10 left, and simply the 'incidents' of anxiety decrease.
The key point: we write everything down, absolutely everything, even if we are sure we will remember.
Not everything can be remembered: no matter how silly it sounds, I write down everything, right down to 'walk the dog.'
What have I achieved this way? The anxiety from constantly being afraid of forgetting something (going over plans, tasks, promises in my head, etc.) has decreased, and in general, the unnecessary mental switching about 'thinking about what I might have promised' has gone away.
2. Reducing reactivity.
We cannot reduce the incoming flow, but we can change how we react to it.
I have always been a reactive person and derived pleasure from it; I would respond immediately to someone's request to do something over the phone, try to complete the tasks set in life or household tasks right away, and overall was as quick as possible, enjoying it. This is not a problem, but it becomes problematic when such reactions turn into instinct. You stop distinguishing between where you are truly needed right now and where people can wait.
The problem is that this leads to negative feelings: firstly, if I didn’t manage to do something or forgot about what I promised to respond to, I would become quite upset, but this alone was not critical. It became critical when the number of tasks I instinctively wanted to react to exceeded my physical capacity to do so.
I started learning not to react immediately to requests. At first, it was simply a technical solution: for any incoming request like "please do this," "please help," "let's meet," or "let's have a call," instead of reacting or even analyzing when I would do it, my first task became to process this incoming request and schedule when I would accomplish it. So the first item in my tracker becomes not the task of fulfilling what was requested, but the task of "read tomorrow what Vanya wrote in Telegram, and understand if I can do this and when I will do it, if I can." The hardest part is fighting against instincts: a huge number of people by default ask for quick responses, and if you are used to living in the rhythm of such reactions, you feel uncomfortable if you haven't responded to someone right away.
But a miracle happened: it turns out that 9 out of 10 people who ask for something to be done "yesterday" can quite wait until "tomorrow" when you get to their matter, if you just told them that you'll handle it tomorrow. This, along with recording tasks and fulfilling promises to address them, makes life so much easier that you start to feel like you're living in a structured plan (and maybe that's actually true). It certainly requires a lot of training, but actually, once you accept such a rule for yourself, you can learn it quickly. And this greatly resolves issues with context switching and unmet plans. I try to set all new tasks for tomorrow, and all requests that I used to react to immediately are also moved to tomorrow, and in the morning of "tomorrow," I deal with what can be done about it and when. Plans for "today" become less floating.
3. Prioritization and handling unexpected tasks.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I acknowledged to myself that the number of tasks each day exceeds what I can accomplish. The set of reactive tasks still remains. Therefore, every morning I review the tasks set for today: which ones really need to be done today, which can be postponed until tomorrow morning to decide when they should be done, which should be delegated, and which can be simply discarded. But that’s not where it ends.
A great deal of frustration arises when you realize in the evening that you haven't completed the critical tasks you had planned for today. More often than not, this happens because unexpected tasks came up, which, despite your best efforts to delay your response, needed to be addressed that day. I started recording all the tasks I completed immediately after I finished them. By evening, I would review the list of completed tasks. A lawyer came in to talk — I noted it down, a client called — I noted it down. An urgent issue occurred that required a response — I noted it down. The car service called and said that I needed to bring my car in today for it to be repaired by Sunday — I noted it down. This helps me to understand why I didn't get to my planned tasks for the day and not to stress about it (if the unexpected tasks were worth it), as well as to identify where I could have been less reactive in handling incoming tasks (like informing the service that I couldn’t make it and that I would bring my car only tomorrow, then finding out that it could still be ready by Sunday, even if I brought it in tomorrow). I try to record absolutely everything I have completed, down to “signed two documents from accounting” and a one-minute conversation with a colleague.
4. Delegation.
The most challenging topic for me. And here I am more inclined to receive advice than to give it. I'm just learning how to handle this properly.
The problem with delegation lies in organizing the delegation processes. Where these processes are established, we can easily delegate tasks. Where the processes are not fine-tuned, delegation seems either too lengthy (compared to doing the task yourself) or simply impossible (this is a task that no one but me can do accurately).
This lack of processes creates a mental block: I don't even think about the possibility of delegating a task. Just a couple of weeks ago, when I decided to switch from Trello to Todoist, I found myself spending three hours transferring tasks from one system to another without even considering that someone else could do it.
My main experiment right now is to overcome my own block of asking people to do things when I'm sure they won't agree or don't know how to do it. Spending time explaining. Accepting that things will take longer to get done. If you share your experience, I would be very happy.
Traps
All of the aforementioned changes are described in quite technical recommendations for working with software, which I will discuss in the next part, and in conclusion of this one, about two traps I fell into during this entire life reorganization.
The concept of fatigue.
Since we are not doing physical work, but mental work, there arises a huge and unexpected problem — to understand and catch the moment when you begin to feel tired. This allows you to take a break in time.
A typical worker at a machine doesn't have this problem at all. First, the feeling of physical fatigue is something we've understood since childhood, and also — it's quite difficult to keep doing physical tasks when the body is unable to. We can't, after doing 10 sets at the gym, do another 5 'just because we have to.' This motivation won't work for entirely obvious biological reasons.
The situation with thinking is somewhat different: we don't stop thinking. I haven’t researched this field, but overall the hypotheses are as follows:
- For a person in constant overload, mental fatigue is not immediately noticeable. It doesn't happen as 'I can't think anymore, I need to lie down' — first, it affects the emotional spectrum, then cognitive abilities, and later perception, but somewhere along here, you can feel that it has hit you.
- To disconnect from the flow, it's not enough to just stop doing work tasks. I noticed that if I, for example, stop working, lie down, and stare at my phone, I read, watch, and my brain keeps working; the fatigue doesn't let go. What really helps is to lie down and force myself to do absolutely nothing (including fiddling with my phone). The first 10 minutes are very hard to get out of the flow of activity, the next 10 minutes a million ideas come to mind about how to do everything right, and after that — it's already calm.
It's important and necessary to give the brain a rest, and since it's very difficult to catch this moment — you just need to do it regularly.
Time for rest/life/family.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm dependent on positive feedback, but I can generate it for myself: it's both a bonus and a problem.
Since I started tracking all tasks, I praise myself for the completed ones. At some point, I shifted from a state of 'settling my work life' to 'now I'm a superhero and can do a maximum of things', reaching up to 60 tasks a day.
I balanced work and home tasks and definitely included home chores in my daily list, but the problem is that these are chores. It's essential to have time for rest and family.
The factory worker is kicked out at 6 PM, while the entrepreneur even enjoys working. It results in the same problem as the inability to catch the moment of 'mental fatigue': in the joy of completed tasks, you forget that you actually need to live.
It's very difficult to fall out of the flow when everything is going well and you're enjoying it — you have to force yourself.
Fatigue comes not from the desire to 'lie down', but from emotional distress ('everything annoys me from the morning'), difficulty in perceiving information, and a decreased ability to switch contexts.
It's critically important to set aside time for rest, even if it feels inconvenient. It’s important that this does not affect you later. It’s not cool to celebrate your productivity for two months and then find yourself in a state where everything is exhausting and you can't stand being around people.
In the end, we live not just for productivity; there are countless interesting and amazing things in the world. 😉
Overall, these are the kinds of considerations on how to (re)organize work and non-work processes. In the second part, I'll talk about the tools I used and the results I was able to achieve.
P.S. This topic has turned out to be so important for me that I even created a separate Telegram channel where I share my thoughts on it; join us —
Source: habr.com
