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The tasks pile up!

If it had been a sin­gle task you received and it came rarely, it would­n’t be a big prob­lem. But if your role involves hav­ing many col­leagues for whom you per­form tasks and ​“as soon as pos­si­ble” tasks are many and come often, you will have a lot to do and a work­day char­ac­ter­ized by con­stant hurry.

How­ev­er, ​“as soon as pos­si­ble” means dif­fer­ent things for dif­fer­ent peo­ple. For some, it means ​“right away, prefer­ably with­in an hour,” while for oth­ers it means ​“when you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty, some­time before the end of the month.”

Green, yel­low, red

Lise-Lotte wrote to me about a suc­cess­ful solu­tion she came up with when she worked for 16 con­struc­tion man­agers. She got three let­ter trays in green, yel­low, and red. She invit­ed the con­struc­tion man­agers and explained over cof­fee and cook­ies that all tasks they want­ed her to do, they had to pri­or­i­tize them­selves. Accord­ing to the prin­ci­ple, their task would be placed in one of the let­ter trays: red would be done with­in an hour, yel­low dur­ing the day, and green not urgent.

She also told them that she would take tasks from the red tray first, then from the yel­low, and last­ly from the green. The fol­low­ing week, when they put tasks in the trays, she would ask, ​”Do you real­ly need this with­in an hour?” Most of the time, the answer was ​”Oh, no, it’s fine for lat­er in the day.” After a few days, they had got­ten so used to this sys­tem that the red tray was almost emp­ty, the yel­low one could be com­plet­ed, so that she even had time for sev­er­al green ones on the same day.

Smart, right?

You can do some­thing sim­i­lar — even if it’s dig­i­tal instead of on paper.

Do this

Do you also receive tasks to per­form from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent col­leagues? Come up with a way for them to be more spe­cif­ic about how quick­ly they expect them to be com­plet­ed. If you don’t receive the tasks on paper to put in let­ter trays, but they come in emails or chat mes­sages, decide on a way to label them as an indi­ca­tion of the desired deliv­ery time. Is it #t, #d, #w for ​“with­in an hour,” ​“dur­ing the day,” and ​“dur­ing the week”, or some­thing else entirely?

Or, cre­ate a board in Plan­ner or Trel­lo con­tain­ing three buckets/​columns – one green, one yel­low, and one red.

At the next suit­able meet­ing (or call a spe­cial meet­ing and offer cof­fee and cake, like Lise-Lotte did), present the idea and empha­size that the col­leagues will also ben­e­fit from doing this, since they are more like­ly to get help quick­ly, the few times they real­ly need it.

Also, ask them to be hon­est about the desired deliv­ery time. If every­one always tags with ​“with­in an hour” just because it’s con­ve­nient, the whole sys­tem will col­lapse, and it will be like before.

More effi­cient time planning

If you help those assign­ing you tasks to be clear­er about when they need them done, you will find it eas­i­er to plan your work­days. You will no longer overde­liv­er unnec­es­sar­i­ly but will opti­mize your work pace accord­ing to your col­leagues’ (and the organization’s) real needs. The scarce resource, your time, will be uti­lized more efficiently!

How do you do it?

Have you done some­thing sim­i­lar to what Lise-Lotte did? Write to me and tell me about your trick. I will be as hap­py to receive your email as I was when I heard from Lise-Lotte.

(Look­ing for more smart ways to com­mu­ni­cate with you col­leagues? Check out how to show your col­leagues when you plan to work from home)