Improve my planning, time management etc. 2

[Vitkacy1989]

Hi Folks!

Have you ever been interested in any time management systems? How to schedule your day, week or month better so you can get more things done, etc. And yet I love when it would be simple as for us engineers, we need to have things ready to be applied

The one I liked very much is Toyota Production System, see:

https://blog.qad.com/2018/03/taiichi-ohno-toyota-production-system/

And also something interesting as well, Plan Do Done:

https://productivitymanagementbook.com/free-sample/

What do you think? What are your experiences? (During COVID I have a bit more time to learn and improve!)
Thanks!

 

[GregLocock]

TPS is good stuff. Other books on the same subject are the hilarious and sad "Car" by Mary Walton, the rather dry "The Toyota Way" and the somewhat outdated but fascinating "The Machine That Changed the World".

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[cdill21]

Try the following search terms: "Timeboxing", "batching", "deep work", "pomodoro", "getting things done". In short, plan your most important tasks, schedule them in your calendar, devote large, *uninterrupted* chunks of time to them, with short breaks (2-4 hours works, 5-10 minute breaks every hour or so). Batch many short tasks together in large chunks like answering email. Review your plan as often as you need.

I have spent years trying to nail down the perfect time management system. It doesn't exist. What works for you will not work for someone else. What works for a top level exec will not work for a junior engineer. Good Luck!

 

[tygerdawg]

Eons ago I was turned on to the DayTimers system. It worked perfectly for me:
[ul]
[li]spend the first 10 minutes of every day planning your day, determining what is to be done, in priority[/li]
[li]create a list of tasks (fully anticipating that some tasks won't be completed or even started)[/li]
[li]Assigning Major Category priority rankings of A (highest) to D (lowest) priority. Personal tasks with P priority were always included, but lowest priority. After all, you're getting paid to work, not do your personal stuff.[/li]
[li]Assigning Minor priority within the Major Priority A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, and so on[/li]
[li]get to work, focus on priority[/li]
[li]It works best if one has a little capability of multi-tasking so that when a interruption or conflict occurs, stopping work on a task, then one can shift effort to another task on the list and return later to the paused task[/li]
[li]Next day, transfer the incomplete tasks from previous day and repeat process[/li]
[/ul]

It worked well for my personality type. Your results may vary.
It also helped me convince The Boss, after an @ss-chewing about missing deadlines, that there were too many meetings. I showed him the data, he reduced number of meetings, more work got accomplished. That was a great lesson for me. At one company I became a pariah for declining meeting invitations (which conflicted with the inefficient company culture). But when the RIF happened, they fired my entire veteran team and kept me because I got more tasks accomplished.

I have struggled to find a modern software equivalent. I'm too much of a tightwad to purchase anything expensive.
I have attempted to create custom Fields of Microsoft Outlook Task view to do the same thing. I added ABCD... and 123... field columns to provide priority sortation of my task list. It worked...sort of. Occasionally I would goof something in the view and have to go back into the Sort function and figure out how to display properly.

NOW I simply put in the task description A0 (for initial creation & later prioritization), A1, A2, ..., B1, B2, ..., and so on. The alphabetical sortation of the task list sorts it all for me easily. This works much better for me now.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[EnergyProfessional]

I use the sticky notes (in W7 and higher) and write down dome tasks I have to do and delete them after completion. you can break down your job into as many or few subtasks as you want. For example, i write down for a project I need to create a fan family in Revit, or
i don't put a time on it, but you can. This also helps me to remember where to continue from the last day. For erample at the end of the day i write down I was working on completing a schedule in Revit, and then the next time I see it is a thing to do.

I tried using outlook tasks to break down a project, but found myself not really updating it as i should. It has nice features and you can also assign tasks to others. All my projects are done 100% by myself save for hiring an external consultant for structural engineering or other things I can't do. So my example is a bit limited compared to actual teamwork.

 

[SandCounter]

Selecting what to work on:
I have a running Excel project list in order of priority. I run the top priority to ground and move to the next. I evaluate and re-arrange the list about once a week with a quick comment at each to remind me where I left off. It is easy to e-mail off to my supervisor to let him know what I am working on and if he needs to re-arrange any priorities for me. I manage about 40 assignments at a time like this.

Running task log:
Every time I switch tasks I log the time and what I worked on. I have a macro on a spreadsheet that makes this easy. Ideally each entry can be tagged to an item on the priority list. It keeps me focused. Time is summed and accumulated under each item on the priority list. It helps me gage when applied time is going exponential and I need to request assistance.

Decreasing interruptions:
I close my door, turn off my phone(s), keep my e-mail closed unless I am waiting on something. At a minimum, I check once in the morning and once in the afternoon or if I am switching tasks or need to take a break. If someone calls and it's important they will leave a message. If it is an emergency they will stop by my office.

 

[Vitkacy1989]

What we have said till now:

Thanks for your answers so far! It's a great resource to consider other's approach.
It seems each one of us has gone through different set of experiences and yet I think in essence we look for something very similar. Such a time management method should be simple (not too simple) and elastic to account for plenty of variants people would like to personalize it with.

My thoughts:

For me, the best thing is that I can print out management cards that I work with and simply fill them up with a pen! I feel stronger commitment then, than when I am working solely on a computer. It's like you would be the CEO hiring thousands of employees, I want to have time like a big fish, to take care of what I consider essential for my time management planning. Simply, there is too many apps on this subject that I find distracting. I think, the most important is the process, intellectual path you will select and if you are guided well, you will go further with your planning.

Any other ideas, inputs? Please feel welcome to share

 

[Vitkacy1989]

Just to note, here is a nice explanation of what I use, see how to use this simple system.


Maybe you can use it too.



Cheers!

 

[eagle2000mech]

That's also on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CCHGC4V/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_aXAbFbR4K1EQ9

Is it the same book as from your first post?

 

[trincherengineers]

I used so many tips from the article

https://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/10-ways-improve-your-time-management-skills.html

which I found very effective. It usually comes down to making sure that you don't get distracted and keep track of your time, and focus more on the task at hand. My colleague from the engineering platform

https://engre.co/

says that even just turning off your phone can perfectly improve your planning skills and increase the efficiency of working on a project