The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Our sit­u­a­tion and cir­cum­stances con­tin­u­al­ly changes, in one way or anoth­er. There are tech­nol­o­gy advances, the orga­ni­za­tion we work is is re-arranged some­how, we start a new job, and so on. Con­di­tions change, and with them, our need to cre­ate new habits, rou­tines and structure.

In a while

The beau­ty of these more promi­nent changes of cir­cum­stance is that they usu­al­ly do not hap­pen over night, but we can often sense or see them com­ing a while before they do. Some­thing is sched­uled for the first day of the new year, we are launch­ing that new thing in Sep­tem­ber, or we start the new employ­ment on Octo­ber 1^st. This gives us time to pre­pare — struc­tural­ly as well.

When the new sit­u­a­tion has gone into effect and we are in the mid­dle of it, we most like­ly will not be very prone to pri­or­i­tize struc­tur­al changes.

This is why it is a good idea to look ahead once in a while and scan the hori­zon for upcom­ing changes and the struc­tur­al chal­lenges what might accom­pa­ny them which you are not cur­rent­ly deal­ing with. And right now might be as good a time as any to look ahead.

Do this

1. Take a moment to think about the fol­low­ing: Have you just start­ed some­thing new? Got­ten new respon­si­bil­i­ties? Set a date for the launch of some­thing? Got­ten a notice regard­ing your orga­ni­za­tion being re-struc­tured? Been hand­ed a new rou­tine in a new sys­tem? Changed offices? Or can you see some oth­er change on its way?
2. Now think about what effects this new change will have on:
   • your inflow of emails — Will it increase and hence make you need more time to process emails?
   • your flow of papers — Could you try to get as much of these mate­ri­als in a dig­i­tal for­mat as pos­si­ble? Do you need to get your­self a des­ig­nat­ed spot for where all papers are placed the moment you get them, instead of them pil­ing up all over your office (and per­haps stay­ing in piles instead of being processed)?
   • the num­ber of meet­ings you attend — Will they increase in num­ber and time required, and hence do you have to pre-sched­ule a num­ber of hours com­plete­ly free from meet­ings and dis­tur­bances every week so that you can fin­ish all you need to do dur­ing the week, and not have to work over-time or on weekends?
   • the num­ber of days your trav­el every month — Do you need to change some­thing in order make cer­tain tasks which you cur­rent­ly need to be in the office to com­plete, more mobile and flex­i­ble so that you can bring them with you?
   • the amount of tasks — Do you need to del­e­gate a num­ber of tasks to a col­league in order to decrease your work­load to a more rea­son­able level?
   • your imme­di­ate sur­round­ings — Will you no longer have a door to close and hence need to find anoth­er way to be left alone and undis­turbed when you need and want some privacy?
3. I am count­ing on you to con­sid­er the upcom­ing change as a kind of project, and that you there­fore have added it to your overview of more exten­sive tasks and projects. If not — do so now.
4. Since you most like­ly won’t be able to make all the changes you need to make in your struc­ture at once, define what you will do as a first step (or first steps) and add it as a new task on your to-do-list. (My first step right now is to decide when­to per­form a new rou­tine at a des­ig­nat­ed time every day.)

Done before the storm hits

If you begin refin­ing your struc­ture before you need to rely on it, now when you might have more time and before the change hap­pens, you will find it eas­i­er to rely on that good, sup­port­ing struc­ture that is worth its weight in gold when things get mov­ing and you find your­self in the midst of it all. Instead of get­ting the famil­iar feel­ing of ​”it’s just too much now and it’s get­ting worse”, you can thank your for­mer self for hav­ing enough fore­sight to pre­vent the present from over­whelm­ing you.

What is your way?

How do you pre­vent things from get­ting out of hand by address­ing changes you need to make in your struc­ture ear­ly on? Tell me!

(By the way, it is smart to get things done well before dead­line. I wrote about six ways to suc­ceed with that.