You are fine as long as you are making progress and completing all the tasks by your deadline. Once you have broken a task into multiple parts, write each part on a different day's to do list. This is a good method for tasks that are a high risk for being stalled by unexpected roadblocks. For example, you want to do the first bite-sized chunk right away because, in doing so, you will discover any missing parts that might take a while to replace. You want to learn that a cable is missing now, not the day of the deadline.
Shorten the task (reduce the scope of the task). Sometimes you can find ways to make a task take less time. For example, when installing Bob's PC, you might realize that Bob is a chatty person and the task will take half as long if you do the installation without him standing there. Alternatively, maybe you were going to put a number of extra software packages on his machine. However, Bob is fairly technical and you know that if you don't install some of the extras, he is capable of installing them himself. In fact, maybe he'll appreciate being allowed to do things his way. If he needs the additional packages, he will ask for them, or you can tell him what you didn't install and offer to come back later to install them. Now Bob gets the instant gratification of using his PC, and you can move on to other tasks. Of course, you'll write 'Finish installing Bob's software' on your to do list for tomorrow so you don't forget.
Change the time estimate. You should always overestimate how long something will take. It's just safer that way. However, sometimes you may go too far, and you will find you can reduce your time estimate to make things fit while still being realistic about the time commitment.
Delegate. Sometimes you can find someone else to take on a task. Junior SAs look forward to being given more challenging assignments that let them learn new skills. Of course, you don't always have the authority to delegate, which brings us to the next suggestion.
Ask your boss for help prioritizing. When you have a full to do list, prioritized and annotated with realistic time estimates, you can really wow your boss by showing the list to her and asking for help setting priorities. If you've never done this, it might sound like I'm describing some kind of fantasy land, but the truth is that managers often feel like they have very little power over what their staff does, and it is quite a breath of fresh air to be asked, 'Am I prioritizing these correctly?' (Of course, if you do this every day you'll get dinged on the 'works independently' question on your yearly evaluation.) Once when I did this, my boss was able to clarify the priorities he wanted me to work on, which helped me in general. Another time, my boss saw a few to do items that he hadn't realized the team was involved with and eliminated them (his words were, 'Joe Schmoe needs to learn to do that himself. I'm going to have a talk with his manager'). Sometimes I've had entire categories of tasks removed ('Tell Joe we no longer support that, and if he has a problem he should talk with me'), and occasionally my boss has delegated tasks to other coworkers. I find most SAs don't know that this option exists and yet, used judiciously, it can be the most powerful time management tool around.
Delay a meeting or appointment. Delaying a meeting can be really bad. Rescheduling can be a nightmare, or annoy many people, or possibly delay a project. However, you can voluntarily miss a meeting or send a delegate. If you are supposed to attend a two-hour meeting—just to make sure that when the new server is discussed you can point out that it only comes in blue, not red—send a delegate to do that. (And if it starts a major discussion, the delegate can call you into the meeting.) Postponing an appointment is better than missing an appointment. I've found that when I postpone an appointment in person or via phone (i.e., not via email, which is not very interactive) often the person is able to shorten the appointment (cut to the chase). Oh, all he really wanted was to know whether the server was going to be red or blue? Well, it's going to be blue.
Work late. I'm listing this option purely for completeness. This has got to be the worst option. Most people have four to five productive hours in them each day. Anything more is spinning your wheels. That's why books like
Back to our example to do list:
Let's
If you are using a PDA, you bump the entry to the next day's list. If you are using a PAA, mark the entry with a hyphen to
