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commented on Time management for system administrators by Tom Limoncelli

Tom Limoncelli, Thomas Limoncelli: Time management for system administrators (2006, O'Reilly) 4 stars

Chapter 8, Prioritization. While reading this I felt that while it was good information, this chapter doesn't help me much at the moment.

But I think that might have been me being pessimistic. Just the type of prioritization (effort vs. impact) that he talks about will need me to adjust how I look at projects.

I feel like at work this will be more important, still, but right now I'm not working and all of my projects are personal. There are certain projects that really stand out as important (find a job!), and some that have priority because I've just committed to them. But other than that what I'm struggling with is making time for things like laundry, and where it fits in with the other things I have to do, and keeping track of all the things that are expected of me right now. Also how to stop procrastinating …

@ryuslash

Before I say anything else, I think it's important to say that I think that I think one can and should use the A, B, C prioritization whenever possible. It's simple, it's easy.

I do deviate from his process in two places, in how to prioritize, and in his "address the tasks in the order they appear".

But (and this is critical) I only came to need to do that after YEARS. One can and should use the original system only until it becomes a problem.

Now here's what I do:

If I'm unsure of a task, I start with his time based "Today", "Hopefully today, if not tomorrow" and then "Everything else" and I assign A, B, C.

Sometimes ADHD makes doing a specific task hard, and then I get "stuck", so I take inspiration from the Covey four quadrant system, but instead of prioritization, I use time.

Then I may choose a small win with big impact over the "next" task.

For example, paying a bill may only take me 10-15 minutes.

I also avoid task switching if I can, and prefer to cluster tasks.

replied to Serge from Babka's status

@serge@babka.social You mention the Covey four quadrant system so casually, but what is it?

Then I may choose a small win with big impact over the "next" task.

Do you mean you might choose a small effort, superficial impact task? Because generally he suggests doing small effort, big impact tasks first. Or do you mean that you usually don't start with small win, big impact?

I also avoid task switching if I can, and prefer to cluster tasks.

This seems reasonable, context switching takes a lot of time.

replied to Tom's status

@ryuslash

https://purdue.edu/asc/handouts_pdf/Coveys%204%20Quadrants.pdf

I have a longer thing to say about task ordering, but essentially the Cycle System collapses prioritization into A, B, C and then says do all the A's first, all the B's next, and then the C's.

But what if a C task would make a bit impact, and only take 10 minutes? I say take that C task, and now you have one less thing on your plate. That's especially true if you're stuck, because if the choice is to sit at your desk staring into space, or getting a C task done, get the C task done.

replied to Serge from Babka's status

@serge@babka.social Yeah that makes sense, but isn't that also part of what this chapter says?

It's not explicit about crossing priority boundaries, but it does talk about prioritizing based on customer expectations, which I took to mean the same thing you're saying. If there is a C that will be done quick and will have a big impact, do it before an A that is either (much) lower impact or (much) higher effort.

Perhaps I read it wrong in the book, but I fully agree with what you're saying :)