Oogiem
0
Lest anyone seem to think that just because I've been practiciing GTD for years that I don't occasionally have issues let me explain my last 6 days.
Due to the final preparations for the Sheep AI class we were hosting and a variety of things that happened on the farm that needed immediate attention I was unable to do any processing of my paper inbox and only scan for emergency messages in my electronic inboxes since Sunday, 2 December. By yesterday my electronic inboxes had over 1000 messages and my paper inbox was full with another 12 inches of stuff next to it.
Friday is usually my weekly review time and I really feel the need for a review. I also had no idea what lurked in the various inboxes that might be urgent and important that I missed during my quick morning scan for looming disasters I did each morning. So my first real task was to process my inboxes. I tackled the paper one first. I actually processed it from oldest to newest. I took out everything, turned the pile over and started on the new top. That way I figured I'd get the more urgent and older items done first. If an item was going to take a longer time to process, as in set up a new project or I needed more time to decide what it really was I put it aside for processing later. The goal was to triage the papers into a more manageable set as fast as possible. Not ideal but the sheer volume was overwhelming so this was my tactic to get it down to a mangeable set of stuff. 3 solid hours of processing and I managed to get it down to where what was left fit in the inbox tray (about 3 inches worth). Those items need more time to fully process.
Next I started on the electronic ones. Again, I started on the oldest messages first and attempted to triage as much as possible out and leave the hard ones in my inbox. In half an hour I managed to get them down to less than 200 messages.
That was all the time I could spend on that sort of work yesterday so I never did finish nor did I get to do my review.
So far today I've already done another half an hour of electronic processing and am down to the last 45 messages. This time I took whatever time I needed to actually process the messages so that I was not handling them 3 times. 2 is bad enough.
I needed a break so I came here to rest my brain a bit. I'll finish reading forums, checking the weather and news and do chores before the final push to get all my procesing done.
By my best estimates I've got at least another couple of hours of processing to do to get everything clean and ready for review.
Review itself shouldn't take much more than an hour. As I am doing my inbox processing I see other projects and actions in my system. I can quickly check off anything that is completed, found a few that I decided to reword just as I saw them rather than wait until the formal review and so on. I've got some scheduled things to do today but I hope to get all processing done and sheep willing, my review done too.
All told my best estimate is that I'll end up spending over 6 hours just handling incoming stuff from my 6 day gap in processing.
I'll post back later with results.
Due to the final preparations for the Sheep AI class we were hosting and a variety of things that happened on the farm that needed immediate attention I was unable to do any processing of my paper inbox and only scan for emergency messages in my electronic inboxes since Sunday, 2 December. By yesterday my electronic inboxes had over 1000 messages and my paper inbox was full with another 12 inches of stuff next to it.
Friday is usually my weekly review time and I really feel the need for a review. I also had no idea what lurked in the various inboxes that might be urgent and important that I missed during my quick morning scan for looming disasters I did each morning. So my first real task was to process my inboxes. I tackled the paper one first. I actually processed it from oldest to newest. I took out everything, turned the pile over and started on the new top. That way I figured I'd get the more urgent and older items done first. If an item was going to take a longer time to process, as in set up a new project or I needed more time to decide what it really was I put it aside for processing later. The goal was to triage the papers into a more manageable set as fast as possible. Not ideal but the sheer volume was overwhelming so this was my tactic to get it down to a mangeable set of stuff. 3 solid hours of processing and I managed to get it down to where what was left fit in the inbox tray (about 3 inches worth). Those items need more time to fully process.
Next I started on the electronic ones. Again, I started on the oldest messages first and attempted to triage as much as possible out and leave the hard ones in my inbox. In half an hour I managed to get them down to less than 200 messages.
That was all the time I could spend on that sort of work yesterday so I never did finish nor did I get to do my review.
So far today I've already done another half an hour of electronic processing and am down to the last 45 messages. This time I took whatever time I needed to actually process the messages so that I was not handling them 3 times. 2 is bad enough.
I needed a break so I came here to rest my brain a bit. I'll finish reading forums, checking the weather and news and do chores before the final push to get all my procesing done.
By my best estimates I've got at least another couple of hours of processing to do to get everything clean and ready for review.
Review itself shouldn't take much more than an hour. As I am doing my inbox processing I see other projects and actions in my system. I can quickly check off anything that is completed, found a few that I decided to reword just as I saw them rather than wait until the formal review and so on. I've got some scheduled things to do today but I hope to get all processing done and sheep willing, my review done too.
All told my best estimate is that I'll end up spending over 6 hours just handling incoming stuff from my 6 day gap in processing.
I'll post back later with results.
