If they made a movie about my professional life, it would be called Kevin Cummings and the ‘To-Do’ List of Doom.
Each workday I start with a nice clean sheet of note paper which I sully with an ugly list of tasks I have to accomplish. This would be tolerable if I could just finish each item and cross it off. Except it doesn’t work that way; every task I accomplish gives rise to two more. And those give rise to two more. And so on until the list is long enough to publish in a handsome, leather-bound multi-volume set.
On second thought, maybe my life-movie would be Hercules vs. the Hydra. Or perhaps just Sisyphus.
If things don’t improve, my legacy to my children will be a lifetime of indentured servitude while they finish the tasks I never had time to get to. It’s not that I don’t try. I’ve purchased dozens of books on time management and fully intend to read them … as soon as I can find the time.
According to the experts the best thing to do is assign each task to one of four categories; urgent and important, urgent and unimportant, important, but not urgent, and unimportant and not urgent. In the real world these translate into things that will get you fired if you don’t get them done, things people get excited about even though they don’t really matter, things that you ought to do as soon as you can get around to them, and things that will be on your list until the day you die.
Another tip from the experts is to keep a log of how you spend your time and then see what you can eliminate. According to the experts, you really don’t have any clue how you actually spend most of your time.
Really.
Here’s how my typical forty hour work week broke down.
Adding items to my “to-do” list: six hours.
Reading items on my “to-do” list: two hours.
Categorizing items on my “to-do” list: five and one half hours.
Bathroom breaks: one-and-a-quarter hours.
Time spent waving my hands uselessly in front of the automatic, motion-activated faucets and paper towel dispensers: two and one third hours.
Time spent being grateful that the toilet paper dispensers aren’t motion-activated: four and three-eighths hours.
Meetings: twelve hours.
Trading e-mails to schedule meetings: Three and two-tenths hours.
Composing post-meeting follow-up e-mails: fourteen hours and twenty-one minutes.
Thinking about where to have lunch: nine hours and eight minutes.
Eating lunch: three and three-quarter hours.
Suffering indigestion from eating too fast: seven hours and thirty minutes.
Compiling data for the insanely detailed analysis of my work habits: eleven hours and thirteen seconds.
Actually completing the tasks on my “to-do” list: forty-two minutes.
Crossing things off my “to-do” list: forty-two seconds.
Feeling good about my “to-do” list: six-tenths of one second.
The experts were right, I was surprised at how I spent my week. I had no idea I wasted that much time feeling good about the “to-do” list. I also came to realize that I’d be a lot more productive if the company installed manually-operated faucets and paper towel dispensers. With the hours that would save, I’d have more time to add things to my to-do list.
The whole exercise depressed me. All of the stuff I was doing was keeping me from getting to the things on my list. Then the answer hit me. All I had to do to feel better was to change my list to reflect the things I was already doing. If I did that, I’d transform myself from always-behind guy to the King of the “to-do” list.
Except none of the stuff that I actually do counts as urgent/important. So I did what any sensible person would do and threw away the analysis. But I paused long enough to wonder what my analysis might have looked like if I had a different job.
For example, if I were a secret agent (like you see in the movies) my time log might say:
Time spent getting briefed by a cranky superior: two hours.
Traveling to exotic locations: sixteen hours.
Eating extravagant meals in expensive restaurants at taxpayer’s expense: twelve and one-tenth hours.
Wooing beautiful women: thirty-seven and one-half hours.
Exchanging veiled threats with the villain: twenty minutes.
Using cool (and highly improbable) technology: ninety-nine minutes.
Time spent making motion-sensitive bathroom fittings work: two seconds.
Time spent ripping motion-sensitive bathroom fittings off the wall: two minutes.
Defeating the villain: Eighteen very busy minutes.
Of course, a time-log for an actual secret agent would probably look a lot more like my work log with hours devoted to meetings, sending e-mail messages and filing various official documents.
When I showed my analysis to my wife she shrugged and told me about her typical week.
Laundry: Fifteen hours and seventeen minutes (including time for extra loads because her husband tends to leave clothes in places other than the hamper despite the fact that she has told him where it is repeatedly and has gone so far as to pin a red-and-white ringed target to the front.)
Remedial hamper training for husband: Two hours and sixteen minutes.
Preparing menus, shopping lists, shopping for food, and preparing meals: eight hours and forty-six minutes.
Time husband spends over tasty, home-cooked meals: fifty-one minutes.
Balancing the checkbook, paying the bills, and wondering about the fifty-two dollar charge from the video game store and the seventy-six dollar charge from the bookstore: nine hours.
Listening to husband complain about his busy week: four hours and six minutes.
Trying, unsuccessfully, to tell husband that her week was just as busy: three hours, thirty-nine minutes and twenty-two seconds.
She wanted to go on, but I interrupted and stopped her. I’d picked up on the subtle hints she’d been dropping. Like me, she felt overwhelmed by the many demands on her time and nothing I could do or say was going to make her feel any better. I just didn’t have the time.
