Manage Tasks
Principle
Time management and productivity are essentially about DOING. Any bigger project is at the end of the day executed as a series of smaller tasks. Therefore follows also, that you cannot “do” a project. Most often projects are more complex and consist of many steps, which have to be executed during a longer time frame. In stead, you have to be able to manage tasks optimally.
Let’s have a look at some terms as they are defined here. We can illustrate the hierarchy as follows:
An objective is a long term goal or a focus area that you will be working on during the next year. You normally have several objectives. They may be defined by yourself, or they are given to you. In work life it is a good idea to agree on essential objectives/focus areas as a part of your annual appraisal discussions with your boss. This will benefit your time management. If you are the head of department, your objectives will most likely be very close to the department goals. Examples of objectives could be “Increase revenues by 12% this year” or “Focus on cost cutting”. Often, you reach an objective by running several projects in the area.
A project is still something you cannot finish in “one go”. It is a finite endeavor that is undertaken to reach specific goals or objectives. Projects should have specific starting and ending points, and are executed as a series of tasks, performed by one or several actors. Examples of projects could be “Generate prospect list of 50 customers” or “Update all sales material”.
A task is in contrast something you can finish in a short time. My preference is to define tasks so small that I can finish them off in one session. This way they are more easy to manage. Examples of tasks could be “Call market surveying company XYZ” and “Update sales slides”.
Please note that only tasks are tangible and directly doing. Objectives and projects are only concepts to direct and organize this doing. Without this organizing, it is however probable that you are not working with an optimal efficiency… In stead, you might have to ask yourself more often “what should i do next?” and “what was it, I was supposed to do now?”. It might also cause you to drift into executing ad-hoc tasks, as given or handled to you by your colleagues, boss, clients and random emails. Or worse: reminders of undone work and missed deadlines.
By defining your objectives and projects yourself, you are able to manage your tasks and take charge.
Admittedly you are most likely already doing this kind of a hierarchical organizing in your mind, at least unconsciously. However, by defining them explicitly, you are making it all more visible!
This is the difference between “I think I have things under control” and “I KNOW I have things under control“.
This article continues, read more: Task lists
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