Using the MYN Reminder Task
May 6, 2012
I want to follow on from my previous blog post where I discussed my dislike for using reminders on tasks in Outlook. If you have not read that yet, read it first before reading this blog.
One additional alternative to using reminders on tasks is this: create what I call the MYN Reminder Task.
What’s that? It’s a high priority task that is scheduled to pop into your Critical Now section, and its sole purpose is to remind you of something coming up soon. There’s no action per se, and it simply calls your attention to something due soon—but something not due today.
This is best explained with an example. Let’s say you’ve completed your taxes a week early and that they are due to be mailed in on April 15. You have a high priority task scheduled to appear April 15 stating “Mail in Taxes Today”. But April 15 is also a busy day for you; you’ve got lots of meetings and might not be looking at your task list very often during the day. So you might set a Reminder Task to pop up on April 14 just to give you a heads up of the upcoming deadline the next day. I use a format similar to the MYN follow up tasks; the task would look like this: Read the rest of this entry »
Why I don’t recommend setting reminders on Outlook tasks
May 2, 2012
If you’ve read my books, or taken my classes, then you know that I do not recommend you use the Outlook reminder feature on Outlook tasks, even when the tasks have a future deadline. People question me on that, wondering if I am really sure. So in this post, I want to tell you a little bit more about why I think using reminders on tasks in Outlook is wrong.
Reminders on appointments are good
First of all, remember that the recommendations of the 1MTD and MYN systems state this: if a task must be done at a certain time of day, then make an appointment out of it—put it on your calendar; don’t rely on the task list. A good example is a phone call that must be made at a certain time—put it on your calendar.
Then, any time you create an appointment, using Outlook’s appointment reminders is perfectly fine. Why? Because they pop up just before the event is due. There is no confusion about whether you need to act when they pop-up or not; for example if it is that phone call, and the agreed-to time is upon you, you must make the call—no question.
But don’t set arbitrary task appointments
In contrast, if a today-deadline task can be done at any time today, then put it on your task list; don’t schedule it on the calendar. The task list is a much better place to list tasks that you will work on when you can—working off a list is ideal for that. Why? Read the rest of this entry »
Good News/Bad News on the Shifting Priorities of Tasks
April 27, 2012
I have for years written that the urgency of tasks changes dramatically over time. Being aware of that helps you manage a large number of to-dos with less effort than you think possible. That’s because if you use a system like MYN—one that shuttles declining tasks out of view most of the time—and focuses effectively on ones that are important, you end up gaining time by not wasting it on tasks that could be skipped in the long run.
And the good news is that most tasks do in fact decrease in urgency over time—my experience is about 80 percent of the tasks we get ultimately fade in value. That’s because priorities move on quickly—over time much of what once seemed critical is now a “big yawn.”
But here’s the bad news–and the reason most of us cannot take advantage of this. When a task first arrives, you have no way to know which way the urgency will shift—will it get less urgent with time or more urgent? If you guess wrong and hide a task that ends up with increasing urgency, you may cause damage to yourself and others.
The only way to know which way your tasks will go is to keep an eye on them; you need to continue to track all tasks until you can tell their ultimate direction. But you cannot just put them in a huge list—you’ll never review the whole thing. Rather, you need a system that keeps them under control. And that’s what the MYN system does: it gives you a way to track all tasks with little effort and a way to reprioritize them as their long-term urgency emerges.
The result? You have a very easy, low-maintenance, simple system that keeps just the right focus on just the right tasks. You get the right things done, and you don’t spend a lot of time managing them.
And best of all, with MYN, the low priority items drop off the bottom of your list almost automatically. The result is you get lots of time back that may have otherwise been wasted—so you come out way ahead!
Michael
Emergency Room Metaphor for Your E-mail Inbox
April 20, 2012
Thinking of your Inbox as the receiving area of an emergency room can help you see how to get it under control.
In an emergency room receiving area, there is often a nurse or doctor who quickly triages patients as they arrive, sending them off to appropriate doctors or places in the hospital. For that to work correctly, that nurse or doctor needs to make quick decisions and keep the room generally cleared. If the waiting room is overflowing and out of control, chaos reigns and people may even die.
In this triage, seriously injured or ill patients are taken right into medical treatment. People who they determine have longer-term or less-urgent conditions are put in a separate waiting room or are scheduled for later visit.
Non-actionable arrivals are also processed quickly. For example, when the postal service arrives with informational mail, it is filed away quickly (otherwise it would gum up the emergency room paperwork). Sales people trying to sell goods are dismissed immediately.
The key point here is that incoming events in the receiving area of the emergency room are processed and decided on quickly and moved on; they are not left in the receiving area. If that room is not kept relatively clear, then chaos results. If that happens, the triage nurse or doctor may lose track of who needs urgent attention and who does not. An incoming patient with serious conditions may get ignored and possibly even die in the chaos.
The lessons here for the Inbox should be obvious. Like patients in an emergency room, some of your incoming mail may need very urgent and immediate attention. Some with slower burn will need to be converted to tasks for later action (and placed in an appropriate 1MTD/MYN urgency zone). Some mail will be filed as information only, and some will be dismissed as sales junk. But in all cases, you want to clear the Inbox quickly so you can make those same quick decisions on the new e-mail that continues to rush in behind the old.
Naturally, the 1MTD and MYN systems have been designed to help you do that—to prevent any of your “patients” from dying on your watch!
Michael
What if I have more than 5 Critical Now items?
4/16/2012
I get this question sometimes: “The MYN and 1MTD systems insist on no more than 5 Critical Now items. But what if I have more than five?”
Well, the reason for the limit is that the list will become a blur if it gets too big, and then you will overlook something. So if you truly have more than 5, here are some strategies to cull it down:
- When you first notice there are more than five, pick off a few of the very quick ones and do them now. No time like the present to make progress.
- Combine related ones together. For instance if you have 4 calls to make today, make one task called “Today’s Calls” and put the details in the body of that task. The idea is to do all the calls in one sitting. But also recall my discussion of not using the MYN/1MTD list for operation duties that are better served by a dedicated software system. For example, use a CRM or sales management system that lists calls if your job is to make 25 sales calls per day; don’t rely on MYN/1MTD for those kinds of high-volume operational tasks.
- And of course, make sure the items on the list are truly Critical Now items. Recall, they need to pass the going home test to stay on the list. That test is: “Would you stay at work well past your normal departure time to complete these items if they were not done?” If the answer is no, then move them down to the Opportunity Now list.
Michael
Use a “Read Later” Tag for Low Priority E-Mail
April 12, 2012
Here’s a question I get in nearly every class I teach. “What do I do with low-priority e-mail that I don’t need to attend to now but I know I may want to get to later? I tend to leave these in my inbox until I can read them, and so emptying the inbox like you recommend is hard to do.”
My solution? Tag it with a “Read Later” Category in Outlook (or use a “Read Later” Label in Gmail), and immediately move it out of your Inbox. And then schedule blocks of time on slower days to catch up on your low-priority mail reading. Read the rest of this entry »
Another Podcast from a while back
April 12, 2012
I do a number of radio interviews and later get the links sent to me and often forget to post them. Here is another from January:
http://www.insidepersonalgrowth.com/2012/01/podcasts/podcast-335-the-one-minute-to-do-list-with-michael-linenberger/
Michael
Some recent interviews
April 11, 2012
Here are links to a couple of recent radio interviews, should you like to listen!
Ohio Fox Radio station:
http://radio.cincom.com/2012/04/michael-linenberger/
Patricia Raskin talk radio
http://www.michaellinenberger.com/Recordings/PatriciaRaskinInterviewJan2012.mp3
Michael
The 80/20 Rule on How Important Tasks Really Are in the Overwhelmed Workplace
Mar 29, 2012
We all get requests to do additional “work” many times a day. Most of those action requests are embedded in the e-mails we get all day long. Beyond the time just reading an e-mail, many e-mails can lead to substantial things we have to do—and doing them can add hours of work to our workday. Because of that, we are all getting the feeling that we’ve got way too much to do, that we cannot get our core work done.
Well, there is an 80/20 rule on all these requests that are coming in. The rule goes like this: 80% of action requests we get by e-mail will decline in importance over time if left undone. Only 20% will get more urgent if not done quickly. If we use this rule appropriately, we can start to solve our feeling of overwhelm and scattered work focus, and accomplish a lot more of our core work. Read the rest of this entry »
March 29th, 2012 in
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Maintaining your Personal Work Management Tools
March 24/2012
I feel we all have three primary personal work management tools:
- the in-box,
- the 1MTD/MYN to-do list,
- and the calendar…
…and I feel that we should make sure we keep these three primary management areas clean and well maintained.
Specifically, make sure you get rid of non-useful information in these areas. The calendar is usually not too bad, but the other areas get out of control quickly.
If there is old useless information in your in-box or to-do list, you will start to get into habit of repeatedly skipping over broad portions of each, and then the tool becomes weaker, less useful. And you’ll start missing some important items there.
So file mail from your Inbox immediately after you triage it (except for deferred replies, and process those within a day or so).
And don’t let your 1MTD/MYN Critical Now or Opportunity Now tasks list get full of tasks that you skip over week after week. Instead, schedule out tasks you know you are not going to work on soon. Or put them in the Over the Horizon section. Otherwise you will just glaze over when viewing entire sections of your list, and then the tool becomes useless.
And in ToodleDo, don’t let the Significant Outcome (SOC) section get old. You’ll just stop looking at that section if you do. Set start dates ahead on those to keep it well focused.
Using 1MTD and MYN, it’s not hard to maintain these tools–just do it!
Michael
March 24th, 2012 in
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