Shawn Axsom's Productive Blog

A company gives you a one-day deadline on a task that would usually take you and your delegates three days. Well, not just one task, but five. You are overwhelmed; what can you do?

What can you make your subordinates do?

My newest client had been making life impossible for the last month. They are very behind on deadlines, and we have been their whipping boy. I thought that the next several months was going to be more of the same, but we are starting to turn things around. Here are some new ideas I’ve implemented over the last few days:

1. Have your subordinates manage your tasks for you. Why didn’t I start trying this sooner? They are more than capable of updating a Google Docs spreadsheet with project finish dates and statuses: they are also in a better position to do so.
2. Put more on your subordinates’ plates. When I only had one task at a time, I felt like I could take my sweet time; however, now that I am so busy with this new client, I have been working much more efficiently; the same can apply for others.
   • Give them a large enough task list to have to desire to erase things from it, but small enough that they can see the horizon.
3. Give them the resources and information they need. Make their job easy.
   • This doesn’t have to take that much more work from you. I have now been using a “Task Template”. I use this email template for ALL significant tasks that I delegate. It is just a text file that I paste into new emails: it has many headings with details like “Due Date”, “Why this due date is assigned”, “What the end result should look like”, “Other people that have worked on this program”, etc. This is really helping me give much more complete specifications for new tasks, which should in turn cause the project to go more smoothly, and with a higher chance we will meet all requirements and deadlines.

I worked a 15 hour day last Friday. This Friday–today–I took off after 9 hours. I’d like to give credit to these ideas, and some more self-management ideas I might share with you later.

As my job transitions more and more from a developer role to a manager, my emailing methods have become outdated. I’m working on it.

As a manager, I have to (1) make sure no client emails slip through the cracks, and (2) be able to retrieve emails quickly when my boss, a subordinate, or a client is discussing the details of a project. If I’m on a conference call, I have to speak it as if I had it memorized.

How do you keep it all together?

Previously I was simply filing emails by company, clearing out my inbox every few days or so. We started a new company, though, with tight deadlines leaving little room to breath, or file.

Now I decided to add a little more GTD to how I use my inbox. I had heard about David Allen’s Getting Things Done book and philosophy plenty of times on Lifehacker and other tech or productivity sites plenty, and while I had tried all of the different todo lists out there like RememberTheMilk.com or Toodledo.com, I hadn’t yet applied it to email. I never had to; I was in college when I first heard about it, and professors simply didn’t send me enough emails.

Here are a few ideas for handling email overload:

• File any emails you read immediately. It costs you a lot of time to have to reread the email later, enough to know what to do with it.
• File the emails into these categories:
  • Actionable – the email requires an action, whether it is a response or something you must do yourself.
  • Delegate – the email is a larger task that someone else should do.
  • Reference – the email requires no action, but will need to be reviewed later.
  • Archive – everything else.
• If you will be referring to an item several times a day, “Star” it (in Thunderbird or GMail)
• Create these search folders:
  • Today (sent)
  • Today (received)
  • Yesterday
  • Clients (filter by domain name or an address book group)
  • Attachments
  • Client non-delegated (not forwarded, replied, or archived)
  • Client non-replied (not replied or archived)
  • Internal non-replied
• If you use Mozilla Thunderbird, use the GmailUI addon. Among other things, this greatly improves Thunderbird’s search capabilities
  • You can type “ACC00015 f:Shawn t:Bob” to search for a task named “ACC00015″ that I sent to Bob.
• Postbox is a great new email desktop client. It has the features of GmailUI, but it also fully indexes emails for fast searches, and it has buttons to see all attachments, links, or previous correspondence with a contact. It is in Beta now, though; the FAQ says it won’t be free after Beta.

I’ve also started using a calendar again. I settled on Lightning, an addon for Mozilla Thunderbird. It allows you to create a calendar event from an email, and it also automatically synchronizes to Google Calendar seamlessly.

I’m still trying to figure out a good way to keep a Todo list. Right now I simply keep a text document with tasks. I order the tasks by the order I want to do them in, and I add “||” in front of finished tasks, or “;;” in front of tasks that are on hold. Then I delete the finished tasks the next day, and I also resume the on hold tasks.

Last but not least, I need a way to see what all projects I’m working on at once. One client forced us to use a spreadsheet to keep track of projects. There might be a better idea out there, but I’m sticking with that for now.

I’ve  tried Microsoft Project look-a-likes, every todo list program out there, etc. My biggest problem is trying to regularly clear my todo lists. It is easy to let my email inbox be my todo list, but then my real todo list gets neglected to the point that it becomes irrelevent. I wish an email program could easily add in todo’s without having to email yourself–emailing yourself seems “kludgy”. I don’t like kludgy.

Are there any fresh ideas for Getting Things Done? I’m learning more Java right now. I’m thinking about creating my own todo or project management program.

I’m an obsessive person. Maybe I have OCD. I will be letting you know all about those here.Whatever my passion happens to be at the time, or whatever is getting me through the day.

I’m a 24 year old developer. Right now I just started this new website to help motivate me into learning more web design on my own. I’m also hoping to get more organized at work. I’ll probably start a professional blog in the future, though, if I get more into it.

Anyway, we’ll see what sticks.