Blog - /Tech

I'm trying to use Planner Mode again to manage my free time. Previously, two different things would cause me trouble. The first troubling thing is that tasks would pile up to the point where I would be discouraged from doing any of them. The threshold for discouragement seems to lie at right around 8 tasks on the plan page for the current day. The second thing is that I would prefer to mark email messages with tasks as important without adding them to my plan page, due in part to the large backlog of tasks.

I am taking several steps to try to solve this dilemma. First, when I think of something non-work-related at work, I immediately add a descriptive task for it on my home computer and stop pursuing it at that point. Second, when I start to feel overwhelmed by tasks, I reassign them to future dates so that they do not appear on the plan page for the current day. Third, if any task does not look like it is going to get done in a timely manner, email the parties involved to suggest a workaround (such as encouraging them to try their hand at fixing some bug themselves), and then move the task into a "shelved tasks" page. This ought to result in a fairly apathy-proof workflow.