Hi all, This is my first post and I've tried to find something similar so as to not start a new thread on an old topic so, if I've missed it, please feel free to just redirect me.
Here's my question/issue; I often end up with a lot of projects for which the deadlines are around the same time. When planning each one, I enter the relevant information, the steps, the lead times and so on, but then they disappear (more or less) from my view until they start to get closer to the deadline. Unfortunately, when they are raised to salience, it can end up being 3 to 5 of them at a time that end up with nearby "start" and "due" dates. I end up with far more tasks on my task list than can actually be completed within the waking/work hours during the weeks prior to those tasks. In the end, I end up feeling stressed and doing mediocre work just to get tasks done before the deadline or being more vigilant than I want to be considering I use relatively complex task management software. To put it in a more concrete way, let's say I have 4 projects that each require 90 hours are each entered (and broken down into bite- sized pieces) at different times into my MLO. As (unfortunate) luck might have it, they all turn out to be due on the same week. When entering each, I figure a decent lead time for each (because I've forgotten, since entering the others, that there will be crashing deadlines) is, say, 5 weeks for each project. Easily doable if only one or two projects come due around the same time, but with all four coming due, I now have 360 hours of work to do in 225 hours of time (assuming a 45 hour work week). Some solutions: -> Constantly checking and rechecking projects, deadlines, due dates, and estimated time needed to complete them, then reworking your task details so that they all fit... provided you make no mistakes, miss nothing, and don't miscalculate. (It seems to me that this option reduces the stress-reduction one hopes to get from a to-do system to that of a pen and note-pad that you have to check again and again just in case an unforeseen crisis is on the horizon.) -> Leaving the lead time blank or making it so long that you are sure not to have tasks that you could be working on obscured, that way you know that by most deadlines everything will have been done long in advance. (Of course, this doesn't allow you to realize that you have extra time to say "yes" to something else, to take a vacation, to catch up on other tasks that don't have deadlines but would benefit from being completed, etc. And it leaves you with the feeling like you're never caught up and always have to be checking things off that list for fear crashing deadlines might creep up on you. Sure things will get done ahead of time, but, again, you end up without that feeling of organization and spaciousness you hope to get out of a to-do system.) -> Using a separate gantt-style program in which you put major projects and recurring tasks and that can show you if you've got more items coming than can be fit into the allotted time unless you start one or two of them earlier. (Like SmartPlans, which I have never tried but seems to let you know how many hours a week you need to do on a project in order to get it done in the lead time and APPEARS to take the total hours in your workweek into consideration.) Then you can come back to MLO and change your lead times and other dates accordingly. (This means using two different pieces of software to get your project management done and can lead to slips and so requires remaining vigilant. Plus it won't fix the times when it's not 4 large projects, but 100,000 little tasks that will all crash at once.) I want to enter my information into my to-do program and have it be smart enough to warn me if I'm coming up to 90 hours of tasks in a 24 hour period (or, 16 if I intend to sleep) or 75 hours of work during a 35 hour work-week. I've tried to play around with different settings in MLO in order to make it produce views that would simulate this kind of thing but haven't really come up with a solution. So, my question is, how have all of you gotten around this type of problem (well, those of you who have multiple rigid deadlines that must be adhered to and risk crashing)? It seems that without this, no matter how sophisticated the time-management software, it's never going to take away that "oh my god, is there something I really should be panicking about?" feeling that results from having a complex list of projects. Thanks for any help/advice, Mary -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en.
