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I like techniques like this, but the issue I find myself struggling with a lot is that some tasks I have are ambiguous enough to be practically open ended. It'

I like techniques like this, but the issue I find myself struggling with a lot is that some tasks I have are ambiguous enough to be practically open ended. It's one thing to bang out 1000 words for a blog post, but I might decide that in this 2 hour block I want to implement a feature. Except at the end of 2 hours I've made almost no progress because of some bug I didn't expect to crop up. So I stick on the "feature" because I want to mark it off the list, but then I run over the rest of my list in doing so. "Estimate better" isn't really actionable, so my issue stands.

joelrunyon 13y ago
I tend to try and break those ambiguous tasks down to less ambiguous action items. Sometimes that's not so easy because the task is "fix the stupid thing" - but I've found you can at least outline your process for approaching it & then sort of make sure you're following your troubleshooting process & using those steps as "action item" tasks.
akg_67 13y ago
I agree with you about ambiguous/open-ended tasks. I experienced the same. And also I don't like to spend too much time trying to list out specific tasks that I need to accomplish every day or do too much context-switching between tasks without continuity. Instead of focusing on daily list, I categorized tasks in large buckets. I drew a square with four quadrants on a Whiteboard. Each quadrant is focused on four distinct aspects. My quadrants for example are: Q1 - Job Search, Freelance work, Q2 - Side Project, Blog, Data Analytics, Q3 - Algorithms, Python and Linux, Q4 - OpenStack, Networking My goal is to spend at least one day on each quadrant every week. Every morning I look at Whiteboard, and decide what Quadrant I want to spend time on that day. At the end of the day, I mark the Quadrant that I spent the most time on with day initials on Whiteboard (M, Tu, W, Th, F, Sa, Su). I keep the day initials for 3-4 weeks so that I can visualize which Quadrant I am spending too much time in and which is being ignored and forces me to balance out day allocations. This visual display keeps me focused and on track.
- toumhi 13y ago
  Interesting! Your quadrant approach reminds me of an article I had read some time ago, about a framework to spend time on different categories (Work, Play, Fit, Push) and the idea of planning one task for each category the week before on a weekly calendar. http://www.fastcompany.com/3008409/dialed/how-schedule-your-day-peak-creative-performance http://www.fastcompany.com/3008409/dialed/how-schedule-your-...
  - akg_67 13y ago
    Very cool. Thanks for sharing the link. It gave me some idea to improve upon my approach. I like the idea of planning one task for each category at start of the week. Right now, for me that weekly task list stays in my mind instead of showing up on whiteboard ... definitely room for improvement. Thanks again for the great link.

joelrunyon 13y ago

I tend to try and break those ambiguous tasks down to less ambiguous action items. Sometimes that's not so easy because the task is "fix the stupid thing" - but I've found you can at least outline your process for approaching it & then sort of make sure you're following your troubleshooting process & using those steps as "action item" tasks.

akg_67 13y ago

I agree with you about ambiguous/open-ended tasks. I experienced the same. And also I don't like to spend too much time trying to list out specific tasks that I need to accomplish every day or do too much context-switching between tasks without continuity. Instead of focusing on daily list, I categorized tasks in large buckets. I drew a square with four quadrants on a Whiteboard. Each quadrant is focused on four distinct aspects. My quadrants for example are: Q1 - Job Search, Freelance work, Q2 - Side Project, Blog, Data Analytics, Q3 - Algorithms, Python and Linux, Q4 - OpenStack, Networking My goal is to spend at least one day on each quadrant every week. Every morning I look at Whiteboard, and decide what Quadrant I want to spend time on that day. At the end of the day, I mark the Quadrant that I spent the most time on with day initials on Whiteboard (M, Tu, W, Th, F, Sa, Su). I keep the day initials for 3-4 weeks so that I can visualize which Quadrant I am spending too much time in and which is being ignored and forces me to balance out day allocations. This visual display keeps me focused and on track.

toumhi 13y ago
Interesting! Your quadrant approach reminds me of an article I had read some time ago, about a framework to spend time on different categories (Work, Play, Fit, Push) and the idea of planning one task for each category the week before on a weekly calendar. http://www.fastcompany.com/3008409/dialed/how-schedule-your-day-peak-creative-performance http://www.fastcompany.com/3008409/dialed/how-schedule-your-...
- akg_67 13y ago
  Very cool. Thanks for sharing the link. It gave me some idea to improve upon my approach. I like the idea of planning one task for each category at start of the week. Right now, for me that weekly task list stays in my mind instead of showing up on whiteboard ... definitely room for improvement. Thanks again for the great link.