I spent the week trying to find time to go through the stuff I want to get done for 52 Weeks of Done. That was the only thing on my plate this week.
It took a little doing to actually find time to go through the list, things being what they are, but I did get through it last night. All open tasks I have to complete this year now have been prioritized, with estimates and schedules. This was a really useful exercise for me already, and I haven’t even gone through the list to do the fun part of the sorting.
First thing I learned is that I’m trying to do too much. Yeah yeah, we all knew that. But when you actually go through the list and do this kind of estimating with it, you get a really good view of just how much you’re trying to do. And how you really can’t do it all.
Second, I assigned multiple criteria that basically correspond to “How important is it to me?”, “How much time will it take to do?”, “How quickly do I need it to be done?”, and “Do I think it goes at the top of the list or the bottom of the list?” When I correlated on these criteria, this mass of tasks that I want to get done this year coalesced into a very clear image of what is really important to me this year.
I knew this exercise was going to be useful to help me get organized, but I didn’t expect such a clear picture for the year to form like it did. It’s kind of exciting. And I highly recommend you try this if you haven’t done something like this before.
