Do As I Say...

Here's a confession for you. None of the Manager Tools team is perfect. Before I worked here, I imagined Mark and Mike with beautiful notebooks, full of tasks which they checked off, on the day they were due, goals met, objectives achieved, perfection attained. I'll let you imagine what it's really like.

This morning I sat down at 10.45, thinking 2 hours on a Sunday, solid work, concentration, I'll be done in a couple of hours. I just want to get a couple of urgent things off my plate. Just want to have a clean list for next week. Just want to do clear out my emails.

Ha! The universe laughs at people like me. Three hours later, I'm still working on something that's urgent, and I've barely managed to make a scratch on the surface of everything else. Of course, it would help if the rest of the MT team wasn't also working sending me more and more to do every time I get one thing done.

So what went wrong? One, I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to get done. 'Get organized' or 'get my life together' is not very clear. And so, of course, I've flitted from one thing to another, with things I've forgotten popping up in the middle of the thing I'm doing.

Two, despite everything we say, and how bad I know it is, I'm distracted by my inbox. If anyone knows how to stop Google making the gmail 'inbox' bold when you get a new email, please tell me. Mid-sentence, I just have to ...... check it.

Three, the music I have on isn't helping me. It makes me jiggle for a start, and that's not conducive to fast typing. And the words distract me, even though I can sing along with apparently no concentration. Two hours of silence would have done me better.

So there's three things, where 'do as I say' not 'do as I do' would help your productivity... and mine.

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