Organizational Skills For Today's High Tech World?

arnie_apesacrappin asks: "Being a busy guy in an IT environment, I've noticed that there are quite a few young, technically savvy people that get handed a great deal of responsibility from their employers. A common occurrence, at least in my opinion, is that a young person doesn't always have the organizational skills to keep up with all the facets that a high pressure / high responsibility job brings. Included among the things that I'm considering are job tasks, social life, personal upkeep, money management, etc. It seems that one of these things (or one of many others) falls by the wayside in a person's new role. A feeling of having so many things to do that one doesn't know where to start sets in, which ends up affecting the ability of the individual to finish even simple tasks. So, what I'm asking is, how do you stay organized? I'm not looking for, 'buy a Palm Pilot,' but how people in the Slashdot community keep a handle on things."

Comments

A couple of things.

[Lazarus Short]

Here are a few things that I find help me out. As always, your mileage may vary:

• Make a to-do list. It may be obvious to some, but it's amazing how much more organized this one simple step can make you.
• Once you've got your list, whenever possible, work on it in order. Now, if an emergency comes up, you can deal with it of course, but don't keep neglecting that boring job thats been on your list for a week just because the newer project is more interesting. This ties into item 3....
• Don't procrastinate! It will, without fail, cause you more work in the long run. Trust me, I speak from experience on this one.
• Don't be afraid to ask for help if you get overwhelmed. Don't make a habit of trying to foist your responsibilities on someone else, of course, and always be willing to help someone else who needs it, and you'll find that there will be someone willing to give you a hand when you find yourself swamped.

Also, for those of you in college, look into organizational skills workshops put on by your school, as they can really be invaluable resources.

Good Luck!

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In the Age of...

[The Iconoclast]

Palm Pilots and MS Outlook, who needs organizational skills? :-P

Write Things down!

[krismon]

When the stuff I need to do tend to grow.. I like to..

1. Write tasks down.

2. Remember where you wrote it (a whiteboard by your desk or something)

3. Look at what you wrote down.

4. Prioritize.

5. Do task.

6. Repeat steps 2-5 frequently until the tasks are pretty managable. #2 & #3 are pretty damn important.. I've seen people write stuff down on their palmpilots and not look at it for a month.. heck I've done that.

Prioritization is equally important, do what you can, and what *needs* to get done in the time you have, don't try to do everything all at once--you'll burn out.

Know when to set your input buffer to no-write

[OlympicSponsor]

I multitask well. In fact, I'm not happy if I have only one "average" task to work on. Depending on the difficult of the task, I can generally handle up to about 4. It doesn't often happen that I reach that limit, but when I *do* (or when one task becomes "non-average" to the extent that I have to drop to single-tasking mode) my technique is: Say no. Better yet, don't even be around to ask.

When I am in the above situation, I sit and concentrate, accepting no input from the outside world. Example: I was working on several tasks at once and the CEO came over and asked a question about the documentation. His question indicated that there might be a serious problem--but I was already working on an "emergency". I said "Freeze. Don't touch anything." (he was doing the docs). Half an hour later, after finishing some tasks, saving my state and checking on his problem, I got back to him.

It's all about knowing how much you can handle and then saying "no" to everything else.

If you aren't like me, though, this won't work. What if you work slow on one task at a time? Your boss isn't going to like it if he can give you one task per month and otherwise has to remain silent around you. Then you have to learn how to multi-task (or simulate it).

[rant] Why is it that apparently intelligent people have no understanding of task-switching? Nearly everyone understands that you can't just do tasks in a random order--you need prioritization. But almost no one understands that you need to prioritize by task importance AND task size. For instance, I'm NEVER to busy to answer a question about how to fix the NT server ("reboot it"). Think of yourself as a process--you have to operate quickly, but you also have to avoid blocking other threads. That sometimes means you have to do work that isn't really yours.[/rant]
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