A daily planning experiment: two weeks of accountable rigorous action

For the last two weeks I tried an exacting method to help make solid daily progress, to which I added the extra spice of an accountability partner to keep me on track. The goal was to determine if the traditional productivity advice to plan each day ahead of time works better than an ad hoc "select the next action in the moment" one, as popularized by David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology, among others. This is meant to plug one of the 10 GTD "holes" I identified recently.

Here's what I did: For two weeks I did a nightly planning session for the next day, which I then worked from. To plan, I printed my calendar and all my actions as a list, then went through an estimating and prioritizing process (details below). During the day I used this list by 1) sticking to it (!), 2) tracking actual time spent on each action, and 3) logging interruptions (both internal and external) that took me off plan.

For accountability I committed to sending check-in emails at the start and end of the day. The morning message was simply a list of what I wanted to accomplish that day (split into "must dos" and "like to dos"), and the evening one summarized what I actually did, with a short analysis.

You can find the details below: Planning the day and Working the plan.

The result: Very helpful, and a real eye-opener. Two surprises: Emptying my inboxes always took at least two hours per day (the consequence of what I've invited into my life - notes from meetings and reading, ideas, and the usual "stuff of life"). And: Everything always takes more time than expected. A general guideline: Double estimates. (This should get better with feedback.)

More specifically, daily planning was helpful because it forced me to think about what's important (prioritizing), what's possible (being realistic), how much time a task should take (estimating), and how much time the work actually took. Finally, it helped me focus by constraining choices, mostly by being a closed list [1] that I wasn't allowed to add to; my only edit choice was to check things off. Overall: Highly recommended. I'm now integrating this into my consulting as the main way to choose from a large master list of work to do.

Future: I'll definitely keep doing this. The exercise/ritual builds in a comprehensive review, and makes explicit my action choices. What's more, there's a gold mine of information to use for positive feedback, including:

• more accurate estimates ala Extreme Programming [2],
• better focus (staying on target),
• more realistic about expectations, and
• more aware of and manage distractions.

Finally, there's a larger piece at work here - deciding what constitutes a "good workday." This is relevant because I found myself being a too-demanding self manager. At the end of many days I felt dissatisfied with my accomplishments, which is both discouraging (didn't I do enough?) and just plain wrong (I did a lot!) The estimated-vs-actual task information is helpful in working out what is realistic. And this leads to making those tough choices around that basic productivity question: What should I be doing? I'll have to re-read the wisdom of lowering my standards (see Great Time Management Ideas From The World Of Improv Wisdom, esp. the fifth maxim: Be Average).

My Idea Collaborator Liza writes more about "What makes for a good work day?" at Power of One Blog: A Whole New Work Day.

What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of this, including the experiments in daily planning you've tried.

Planning the day

Creating the plan was actually fun. As I mentioned in my Matt Goes Digital post, the (apparent) iCal bug of random ordering during printing forced me to look at actions each day anew. An example of the list is to the right. (Yes, Matt actually used an image in a blog post.)

After printing it I sat down with my pen and decided what I wanted to do the next day. To help the process I tried to include a mixture of actions on multiple dimensions: Importance, difficulty, duration, etc. (I also played with a novel idea: including joy - more on this in the future). Once I'd picked a set that seemed reasonable to do in one day I put time estimates next to each one (with a :15 minute granularity) and tallied total time required. Then I estimated how much time I was able to (or willing to) work that day, and compared. Inevitably the former was much greater than the latter. There was sobbing, gnashing of teeth, and brutal negotiations.

Once I had my list, I sent it off to my partner, etching it in stone (OK, ones and zeros). Lest you underestimate the power of doing this, consider what my wife (a wonderful, warm, beautiful lady) said: "Of course you'll do those things -- you're sending them to a pretty blond!" Surprisingly, I hadn't put this together before. :-) The lesson here? Pick someone you want to impress/don't want to let down.

Working the plan

I really liked the next step too: Once I woke up and got ready to work, I found a pre-computed list of specific work to accomplish, which means I didn't have to think. It was as if someone who knows me well had painstakingly figured out in detail how to spend my day. So I simply had to sit down, pick one, and go.

Regarding the order, I played with numbering the items, but ended up dropping that practice. Basically I had some clearly important ones I really wanted to complete, plus a handful of others I wanted to work in.

A tool note: I found two types of productivity timers handy: count down (for time blocking/mapping) and count up (for tracking time spent). Both had a place. I found a few useful useful count down presets: 2 minutes (for "Do It Now" items when emptying inboxes), and [insert your favorite project "chunk" time], e.g., Tolerable Ten, Drucker's 90 minutes, 96 minutes (80-20-ing an 8 hour day), and 48 minutes (80-20-ing one hour - via Accomplish More by Applying Parkinson's Law). For the Mac I used two Dashboard widgets: Minutes and chronoTrack.

References

• [1] For more see Are Daily To-do Lists And GTD Compatible? and Mark Forster's Do It Tomorrow.
• [2] I've written about XP and productivity here, including Is GTD The "Extreme Programming" Of Time Management?. And no, I'm not talking about the XP that is giving Eric Mack fits (heh heh heh).