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

Risky to just wait

She could, of course, just lean back and wait for an ​“order,” but she likes to plan ahead and, above all, to have con­trol over her time. It has hap­pened more than once that project man­agers have emailed her at the last minute, ask­ing her to arrange some­thing that ide­al­ly should have been fin­ished yes­ter­day. That over­turns her plan­ning and makes the work­day far too stressful.

Draw it out instead

Over time, it has become clear to her that she is right to take the ini­tia­tive her­self, but it would be over­whelm­ing to keep track of all the projects and have them con­stant­ly in view while she is try­ing to get work done.

So she has cre­at­ed a rou­tine to reg­u­lar­ly draw out what she will need to do next in the dif­fer­ent projects with bet­ter advance notice, instead of hav­ing urgent tasks dropped in her lap when it suits her least.

You can do the same.

Do this

1. First, make sure you have an overview of all the projects you are cur­rent­ly involved in. If you do not have one, cre­ate one. Or remind your­self where you can see all the projects (e.g., in which sys­tems). What I call ​“projects” here may in your case be cas­es, clients, teams, or some­thing else; you know best, of course.
2. Depend­ing on how quick­ly things move in your orga­ni­za­tion, decide how often it makes sense to check what there is for you to do in the dif­fer­ent projects. My client chose to do it once a week.
3. When it is time, review the overview of all the projects and ask your­self what the next thing is that you need to do in each project. If noth­ing is clear­ly defined (and the project is active), ask the per­son lead­ing the project what they think you should do next in the project (if any­thing). That way, you can find out about tasks with bet­ter advance notice than if the project man­ag­er sud­den­ly appears with some­thing that has become urgent. It may be that they have it in the back of their mind, and assume that you will soon car­ry out a cer­tain step in the project, but that they cur­rent­ly have so much going on that the thought of giv­ing you a lit­tle advance warn­ing nev­er occurs to them.

Plan­ning ahead and focusing

If you decide when you will review all the projects you are involved in, you do not have to car­ry them around in your mind all the time. In between, you can let them go men­tal­ly and instead focus whole­heart­ed­ly on the task at hand. You will be less scat­tered and will find it eas­i­er to concentrate.

And if you draw out tasks instead of wait­ing for them to drop down on you, you gain bet­ter fore­sight. You sim­ply have more con­trol over your time.

How do you do it?

Do you rec­og­nize your­self in my client’s sit­u­a­tion? How do you keep track of a large num­ber of projects with­out some­thing you need to do being missed until the last sec­ond? Write to me and tell me. I con­stant­ly see how oth­er peo­ple have cre­at­ed order and overview in their own way, and it enrich­es me great­ly. I am curi­ous about how you have done it.

(Do you some­times find it hard let­ting go and not think­ing of work tasks at the end of the day? Here is one thing to try to more eas­i­ly let go of thoughts about work!)