October 12, 2009

Here’s how I used to work:

1. Create tasks in a task manager.
2. Meticulously sort them by project and priority.
3. Select some of them as today’s tasks.

There’s a massive industry built around this method, and for good reason: it sounds nice and makes sense. Define your tasks, then do them. Write a blog article, fix the toilet, buy groceries, code the products page.

But I never get anything done this way. Tasks seem easy when I read them, so I schedule too many at a time. After work, only a handful are checked off, sometimes none. I feel unproductive and lousy :(

The thing about tasks is they’re reminders, abstractions that communicate what to do, not how or how long. I write down “code the product pages” so I don’t forget to do it. I may need to do twelve other things to code the page, but I don’t write those down because they tell me how to do it, and I already know that. If I don’t know how to do something, I probably shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. I just need a little reminder.

Task-based schedules fail precisely because they’re abstractions—they represent a large jobs that requires significant and uncertain effort. With this kind of schedule, the task is the basic unit of work. Productivity is determined by the number of completed tasks. I might estimate three hours to code the products page, but after starting I discover an issue that balloons the time to seven hours. My schedule is blown, I check off one task instead of however-many-scheduled, and I feel bad, despite working those extra for hours on something productive and necessary.

The reader who loves his task manager is shouting that I’m doing it wrong: my tasks are too big and I should break them down into sub-tasks. Kay. To code the products page, I must generate the model and controller, write tests, code the views, test in several browsers. Aren’t those instructions? I don’t need instructions because I know how to do the damn thing. Tasks are reminders, remember? Breaking down the original task only creates extra work and more to manage. Plus it does nothing to address the unexpected work which caused the extra time.

The real solution is to stop scheduling tasks and start scheduling time. Make time the basic unit of work. Seconds, minutes, hours, whatever. Instead of saying “what tasks can I complete today,” say “what can I get done in 60 minutes?”

Here’s how I work now:

1. Commit to working a fixed block of time, usually two or three hours.
2. Set a timer and keep it visible on the screen.
3. Work until the timer runs out, then stop.

The only goal is to work for a set amount of time. I usually do two or three of these sessions per day, and as long as I spend the entire time working, I’ve succeeded. Tasks are no longer metrics for success and productivity, they’re back to being reminders. If I finish a task before the timer is done, then I say “yay!” and start the next one. More important, if I don’t finish a task when the timer ends, no biggie, I feel good anyway because I met my goal. Bonus: no matter how frustrating my work is, I can look at the timer tick-tocking to zero and know that soon I can do something else, and the harder I work the faster the time will go.

The result is I get far more done than I ever did by managing tasks. Because I don’t define my tasks upfront, I can reflect on all the little things I finished instead of feeling bad about the big things still incomplete. That’s a big morale boost and it energizes me to dive in to the next session, something I rarely experienced with my task-based workflow.