I don’t know about you, but the last two weeks have been pretty busy for me. People are coming-and-going, new projects begin, tax returns are due (January 31 deadline for individual online returns in the UK) and I have all those New Year resolutions swirling around my heads, too.
Poet, David Whyte, talks about being so busy that every one around you appears to be too slow. The person walking in front of you on the street is in the way; your partner left dirty dishes in the sink, again; you colleague, superior or subordinate has dropped the ball, again.
I hate it when I feel like that. I feel like that now, and I know my ‘job description’ is to blame. It’s just too busy!
Prune
In December, I ruthlessly cut out anything that is rushed or disorganized. I learned this trick from commercial bankers. If you are in a hurry, the answer is No. You are obviously disorganized and your project will fail.
And lest I forget, I staple evidence of disorganization to the front cover of the file!
But I have pruned and pruned, and still, I have too much that I want to do.
Prioritize
I spent much of my life working in universities. It surprises most outsiders (and students) that the main job of university lecturers is not to teach. They are required to teach adequately – I was even told by my Dean once – CHEAT don’t TEACH.
Research is their main task. It is the only thing they can be promoted for and to protect this priority, people get up to work early in the morning and it is a big no-no to disturb any one ‘working at their papers’ or ‘in the lab’.
Admin or community service comes a poor last and tasks are shared and rotated. Even being Head of Department is rotated. You do your share, perfunctorily. That’s it. And it is done in the afternoon.
I’ve tried priotiising, but I don’t have three goals. I don’t even have five. I got down to nine and the list has lengthened since the New Year.
My difficulty is that when I am doing one task, I am worrying about the others. Once we get beyond entry level jobs, it is not the tasks themselves that is important, it is the interrelationships between tasks that are critical. To shift sectors, triage is more important than task. University lecturers add value by showing students where a field is going rather than by reciting the lecture they gave last year and the year before.
Picture
As yet I have never found a system that allows us to track the inter-related progress of several projects and whether we will achieve our grand plan. What I do, when I need to work at this level, is draw my goals in a circle and imagine bringing all the goals in successfully at the same time.
Pictures are great for seeing interconnections. Systems theorists are pretty good at drawing pictures of how the world fits together.
What I did this morning was to write my job description in one line. A job description should only have ONE goal, shouldn’t it? Basic Fayol. This how it begins
My job is to achieve, simultaneously, . . . . . .
I took a blank piece of paper and put 2009 in a circle in the middle and started putting my sub-goals in circles around the page. Hey, presto, they fell neatly into five groups. I thought some might fall away but they grouped quite naturally.
My next test was whether I could I set quarterly and monthly goals for each of the five groups. I took another page, put 2009 in the middle and drew FIVE spokes, marked off quarters and months for the first quarter, and jotted down some notes. Yep, this works. And I got better names for the spokes, making it clearer what I do, why I do it and how each spoke makes the others possible.
And best still, the pull on my attention seems to have resolved a little. The tasks that have been getting short shrift, somehow feel like they should be done first thing in the morning, though some can be prepared the night before, and the tasks that I enjoy doing but have more elastic timescales can be done in the late afternoon.
Mmmm, definitely worth trying.
Come with me
a) I’ve already said ‘no’ to one or two people this year (amazing), though in each case I’ve been able to follow through with a good introduction or significant friendly help.
b) My prioritization has sucked, but at least I’ve been aware of it. I’m feeling a bit better.
c) I’m testing out my one line job description: my task is to achieve simultaneously . . .
A picture would be better still.
Can you state your job description in one line?
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