One thing at a time

It may sound very simple to do 'one thing at a time', however it's not, at least not in complex work spaces and organizations of our time. Reason: Our mind is a wonderful object, it can focus and it can split focus at the same time.

Over the period of years I have seen, that almost all the time, myself and people around me have benefited by adhering religiously to this simple principle. The advantage of not getting knocked down by noise in the environment by multi-tasking weighs huge in favour.

We can argue about pros & cons and many other things, however the point I want to illustrate is how to actually do and implement this principle. While I was preparing to write, I came across a interesting post of Mark Forster with the same title on his blog 'Get Everything done'. You can read the post here.

In very simple words, he has spilled the secret sauce. The method is to list down everything (slotted already into tasks) in descending order of urgency ( not in order of importance - 'coz if they are not important, why they are on your list ;). [ This is just like AGILE methods, writing down user stories, prioritizing them, adding dog points and then allocating resources to complete the user stories. ]

Once you are done with the list, start putting an end date to each of the task after allocating 100% (or whatever % available) of yourself to the task. Once done, do S.A.V (Screw Around Vigorously - do it 'coz it fixes) and finish. No excuses to CYA (Cover Your Ass)

If you cannot finish on time, revisit the estimates and update all dates. remember not to skip to reduce the count of task at hand. Follow this principle and thy soul be rewarded in both long & short run with peace and comfort.