indicate that it was moved, and hand copy the entry to the next day's to do list.
You've reduced today's workload by one hour. You still need to eliminate two more hours.
Luckily, you also have a B priority (GCC upgrade) that can be moved to the next day. You move it the same way as you did the C priorities (PDA: bump it; PAA: mark it with a hyphen in today's list and handwrite it into tomorrow's list). Now your list looks like Figure 5-6 and matches your number of available hours.
Dealing with Long-Term Projects
How do you deal with a long term-project? When a to do item is going to take six months, how do you work that into the time estimates for today?
It is important to break big projects into smaller steps or milestones. Very big projects often have project managers who do that for you. For your own projects, you need to do this for yourself. Take a moment to break the project into parts and estimate how long each will take. Write each milestone on the to do list of the day you are supposed to start working on it, or mark it on your calendar if it is far enough out. It's this kind of planning that really impresses managers.
On my daily to do list, I write the name of the project and the current milestone. That way I'm reminded of the larger goal as I work on each daily task. For example, I might write 'Network Reorg—map current network.'
Step 4: Work the Plan
Spend the day working as close to the plan as possible. First do the A items, then the B items, and then, if you have time, the C items.
It can be useful to have some kind of alarm or reminder to tell you when your meetings and appointments are so that you don't have to keep interrupting yourself to look at the clock.
When you finish one task, start on the next task. Keep the momentum going.
Many people have told me that they spend a lot of time trying to decide what to do next. A simple solution is to do all the A priorities in the order they appear on the list, and then do the same with the Bs and the Cs. We'll improve upon that system in Chapter 8, but for now, you can't do too badly by just doing them in order. The items higher on the page tend to be things that were copied from previous days. In other words, items you've put off tend to bubble up to the top of the list and will get taken care of first.
Try to take advantage of your momentum by moving onto the next task after you complete a task. Do this even if a task took less time than you had planned; it will make up for time lost when another task takes longer than expected.
Once in a while, pause to stretch. If you finish a task early, take a quick walk around the building. Being in IT generally means you don't get enough exercise. Carry a file folder so it looks like you are on your way to something important—nobody will be the wiser.
Once you've finished all your As, start working on the Bs. If you finish those, congratulate yourself by working on the most fun C item on the list.
Step 5: Finish the Day
It's rare that you will complete everything on your to do list, but you do want to make sure that the items are all managed. An item is
A half-hour before the end of your day, look at the remaining items. If there are any As that aren't complete, you need to manage that situation. Call the person expecting the task to be completed and come up with a contingency plan. Or, if these are self-imposed deadlines (and they often are), copy the items to the next day.
In our example, you had enough time to unpack your tape library, make sure it came with the right cables, and even pantomime the process of mounting it in the rack to make sure the cables would reach and so on. However, you weren't able to find anyone to help you lift it into the rack. Therefore, you managed the item by noting what you did accomplish (checking off the items) and copying the remaining parts of the project to the next day.
With a PDA, you would bump the item to Tuesday's list. With a PAA, you can write in 'unpacked and checked' next to the item, mark it with a hyphen, and write 'mount tape library' on Tuesday's list.
Any remaining Bs and Cs should also be moved to the next day. In our example, there aren't any to be moved because we moved them
