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 managed if you've given it sufficient attention on that day.
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 already. Our lists now look like Figure 5-7. As you can see, it took us six hours to complete five hours of tasks.
Figure 5-7. Monday's to do list at the end of the day
Step 6: Leave the Office
Figure 5-7 shows a list on which every item in the Done? column has a mark. You've managed every item on your list. No, they aren't all completed, but they were managed. Sometimes managing an item means making sure it got the appropriate amount of attention; for low-priority items, that means they were moved to tomorrow. The important thing is that they were not forgotten.
You can look at your to do list and get the satisfaction of knowing you've managed everything on your plate today. Congratulate yourself. Smile. Put your coat on and go home happy. You deserve it.
I used to leave work every day feeling terrible. I felt like I had worked and worked, but I felt no sense of accomplishment. When I use The Cycle, I'm able to look at my list of items, see that each one was managed, and feel closure. I can leave the office with a smile on my face.
Step 7: Repeat
Let's pretend it's Tuesday. You can repeat The Cycle with today's list of items.
Today I'll introduce some advanced topics and show you how to manage them. In particular, you'll see how The Cycle works with a request-tracking system, voice mail messages, and interruptions.
Create today's schedule
You should start each day by checking your calendar for any appointments and filling them into your day's schedule. Today you have no meetings, so your hour-by-hour schedule is blank except for one hour for lunch, which leaves you eight hours for work out of your typical nine-hour day.
So far, so good!
Create today's (Tuesday's) to do list
Yesterday, four new tasks were added to your plate. Let's call them Task1, Task2, Task3, and Task4. They're low-priority tasks delegated to you during the staff meeting. They were not as important as the tasks you had to do yesterday, so you recorded them directly onto the first to do list that you thought was realistic, which happened to be today's (Tuesday's). This is in addition to the tasks that you managed yesterday by placing them on today's to do list.
When you arrived at your office today, your voice mail light was flashing, so you listened to the three messages and recorded them in your to do list, even if they didn't require any action.
It turns out that the first one was a company-wide notice about the east entrance of your building being blocked. You're so glad they're wasting time for everyone in the company because obviously you would never have realized what all the construction equipment and the big freakin' signs that say East Exit Closed could possibly have meant. Since this doesn't require any action from you, you promptly cross the item out.
The next message is from your Cisco salesperson. You record the number, since you're going to call him back (but before you cross out the item, you will verify that your contact database—described in Chapter 12—has the same number listed). The third message is a salesperson cold-calling you. You're not going to return that call, so you just write "junk" and mark an X in the Done? column. Your Tuesday list now looks like Figure 5-8.
The day hasn't started, and you've already completed two items! You rule!
You might be wondering why you write down a task that you immediately mark as completed. You do this because it becomes a log of your phone calls, which can be a good "cover your ass" measure. This is one reason I prefer a PAA to a PDA. With a PAA, it's less effort to write junk items that immediately get crossed off.
Figure 5-8. Tuesday—after listening to your voice mail
I've already mentioned a couple of times that having some kind of request-tracking system is a good idea. How do you handle that in The Cycle System? You designate a specific amount of time each day to work on your tickets. I once had a job where I was expected to spend one-third of my day working on such requests. Therefore, every day I added a two-hour task called Tickets to my list. I wouldn't handle those tickets only during a two-hour block in the morning, but rather I used Tickets as a time holder for those moments in the day when I needed to work on tickets because one of them had become an unexpected priority.