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We Still Don’t Get Things Done

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Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#141

Post by Void_ »

kilroy123 wrote: post #23
iamnotwhoiam wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone like me! I’ve been doing the exact same thing for about a year now. My quality of work is up, and so is my salary. I have more time for family and hobbies. Whenever I’m stuck on a problem and my four hours are up, I right down my thoughts and the next morning I find the solution quickly. Either you and I are special, hyperproductive but easily exhausted workers, or everyone else is just pretending to work twi…

It think it's a combination? No way anyone is working productively for 8 hours. It's not just possible in the long term.

I used to work productive 8+ hours in my early twenties - driven by excitement.

Definitely closer to 4-5 now that I’m close to 30.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#142

Post by KVFinn »

Lightbody wrote: post #131
jkhdigital wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may not be helpful, but for me scheduled timeboxes are not quite the right solution. The real problem is capacity management, so the ideal solution would be something that makes it clear how much space a commitment occupies without simultaneously forcing me to decide when I will do it. I know there are some who probably insist that I’m trying to have my cake and eat it too…

I hear ya and I understand what you’re getting at. We’re working on some ideas that might address it, but as you already surmised it’s a bit of a challenge because the two desires are at odds with each other. One way we (somewhat) solve for your desire today is that we schedule out all the stuff but then make it fairly easy to decide what to do just-in-time without wrecking the whole schedule. It’s not perfect but it…

>One way we (somewhat) solve for your desire today is that we schedule out all the stuff but then make it fairly easy to decide what to do just-in-time without wrecking the whole schedule. It’s not perfect but it’s been working for some of us.

I just tried the service and my immediate reaction was similar to above. I can't just context switch on a whim. It feels super strange to have a list of similar priority things just given hard times in my calendar, even for things like exercise. I do want something much more just-in-time where I am constantly picking from a set of boxes, and urgent tasks and deadlines are managed.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#143

Post by nivertech »

moksly wrote: post #32

The more project management tools I have to work with, the less likely I am to work for or with a company. I have a somewhat similar stance on software architecture. Sure, I’m TOGAF certified but if you actually expect me to work with notation correct Archimare/UML/whatever and not just draw boxes on a napkin you’re either insane or sell a product with no competition. This is anecdotal of course, but after 30 years o…

It looks like what you're describing is so called "Agile" (with the uppercase "A") methodology of SDLC[1], not true industry best practices.

Agile was invented by consultants who's agenda was to maximize their profits first, not just to improve SDLC.

Also, there is no silver bullet, and everything is a trade-off, so each best practice has to be adapted to a particular project.

Last thing: sometimes any process, even as bad as "Agile", is better than no process at all. Especially for the dead-on-arrival cases like government-related projects.

--

1. SDLC - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#144

Post by VladimirGolovin »

crispyambulance wrote: post #99
kilroy123 wrote: post #14

I'm always curious how others "work." I use the Pomodoro technique myself, where I do a minimum of 8 sessions per workday. I try to do 10, but usually, I'm somewhere in between. I do not count meetings. Every day at work, I show up and do a minimum of 4 straight hours of concentrated and focused work. I often get told things like: "I'm killing it", "I'm a high producer", etc. To me, I feel like I'm cheating the syste…

4 hours, in my experience, is the absolute maximum that a motivated person can work on a heavy task in a day. I can't cite any study for this, but it's a number that I've seen used by really solid teams, internally. Billable hours, of course, exceed 4 hours-- but that's because billable hours includes "boilerplate" work. 4 hours is A LOT. You can get a lot of stuff done in 4 hours. 4 hours x 5 days a week can be sust…

My maximum is about 8 hours for a creative / cognitive task, but that requires pushing / forcing yourself on a level comparable with Apollo Creed's training montage.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#145

Post by VladimirGolovin »

gpsx wrote: post #139

What would someone do if their to do list was finished? Presumably a person always has more to do. And presumably people think of doing a lot more than they actually can do. Your reach should always exceed your grasp. (Or, less politely, when all is said and done, there is a lot more is said than done.)

You never finish a to-do list. They are endless. You will always have stuff to do, and it literally never ends. My solution is to be at peace with the fact that it's endless and I'll never be able to stop and say, "that's it, I've completed my to-do list."

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#146

Post by cdrini »

phs318u wrote: post #118

My current job title is "Head of T ". I have to get lots of stuff done. But unless my to-do items are, "play guitar", "play nethack", "go for a walk" or "eat as much spaghetti as you want", chances are I don't _want_ to do those things. I _have_ to do them. I promise, you that a list comprised totally of things that I _want_ to get done - will get done. The things I _have_ to get done? Eh - sometimes they get done, s…

There are loads of things I _want_ to get done that have subtasks that I _have_ to get done. In fact, I'd say all my "have to" to-dos are in service of a want. I _want_ to be healthy and live long, so I _have_ to exercise. I don't want to exercise :P I want feature so-and-so, so I have to implement it. Implementing something is sometimes annoying, but I want it to exist.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#147

Post by DevoidSimo »

Doches wrote: post #38

This is _exactly_ why I stopped keeping TODO lists, and started keeping DONE lists instead. What's a done list? Think of it as an anti-TODO list: your DONE list is where you write down everything that you've, well, done. You know that little dopamine kick you get from filing a neatly-tagged TODO or marking off something that you've finished? A done list is just that, and the only way to use it is to train yourself to…

Interesting to see this exists, I wrote a similar thing for myself which acts like a personal diary. As well as helping with reflection, it's really useful come performance review time. Answering "what did I do this past (year/X months)" becomes just reading the entries you've logged.

Much easier than reading git history, and trying to remember other items that aren't in source control.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#148

Post by trendoid »

Doches wrote: post #38

This is _exactly_ why I stopped keeping TODO lists, and started keeping DONE lists instead. What's a done list? Think of it as an anti-TODO list: your DONE list is where you write down everything that you've, well, done. You know that little dopamine kick you get from filing a neatly-tagged TODO or marking off something that you've finished? A done list is just that, and the only way to use it is to train yourself to…

i noticed in the example that there are some to-dos in the list too? Or am i misunderstanding them?

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#149

Post by netjiro »

superice wrote: post #18
kilroy123 wrote: post #14

I'm always curious how others "work." I use the Pomodoro technique myself, where I do a minimum of 8 sessions per workday. I try to do 10, but usually, I'm somewhere in between. I do not count meetings. Every day at work, I show up and do a minimum of 4 straight hours of concentrated and focused work. I often get told things like: "I'm killing it", "I'm a high producer", etc. To me, I feel like I'm cheating the syste…

I use a similar technique, combined with meticulous time tracking of every and any minute I spend professionally. As somebody who is self-employed, I quickly realized that working 8+ hours per day is an absolute myth. I count any day where I spent more than 4 hours in a state of focused work as a great day, and weeks where I spend more than 20 hours a week are rare. My personal goal has shifted from trying to work as…

> As a side note: I'm very much wondering whether I should insist on 40 hour work weeks

Productive h/w varies way too much from person to person and by circumstance. I let ppl set their own expected work schedule for the next few weeks by themselves as long as they keep the prediction up to date and their accuracy is reasonable.

I have had ppl get solid 40-60h/w effective time on target, and I have also seen One size fits all is nonsense. If in doubt: measure and analyse.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#150

Post by vidarh »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #97
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as a similar problem as we (humans) have with all systems: we mistake the system for the actual solution. It's not. You need to focus on the real problem at hand, and devise/adapt a correct solution in context. Systems and frameworks provide helpful tools and templates, but they all require contextual adaptation. FWIW this is what I like about the foundations of Agile for project management. The manifesto po…

This is not unusual. Something like ISO9001 Quality Management is literally a checklist of pleasant aspirations which leaves companies to define the details for themselves. So as long as you define what "leadership" or "customer satisfaction" (and the rest) mean to you, and you have a vaguely plausible but not necessarily effective process that ticks each of the boxes, you have a quality management process. And you c…

One of my jobs a long time ago was to update the quality management process of a relatively large company. I wasn't responsible for the actual text changes, but properly integrating them.

It was the first time I'd read ISO 9001 documentation end to end, and it was eye opening.

Total bullshit.

It ensured there was a paper trail documenting the total bullshit, of course, but it nevertheless was total bullshit that said a lot about describing what was done, but nothing about ensuring it actually worked as it should.

This same place had locked doors to the interior stairwell so consultants like me could not even get into areas we were not assigned to because of work done for clients like the police, but had confidential documents about police infrastructure sitting unprotected on the machine I was assigned.

To me that was a good indication they ran everything including security how they handled quality management: it was just a box ticking exercise. Document things and track deviations rather than care about actually getting things right.

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