With the launch Ali2 I noticed my daily tasks changed…a lot. I needed to take an objective look at what I needed to accomplish during the day and organize things a bit. I noticed my tasks fell into four categories:

1. Stuff I don’t want or need to be bothered with.
2. Stuff I don’t need to do but I want to.
3. Stuff I want and need to do.
4. Stuff I want to do but don’t need to.

First, I knock out the stuff that would be a waste of time; stuff I don’t want nor need to attend to. From here, it depends on your personality: do you prefer doing the things you don’t like first and saving the stuff you do like as a treat/reward or do you prefer to do the things you like first and save the things you don’t until the end? I personally break things down even further then work on them in the order they were received. It is more efficient for me to work through things this way than bouncing between sites and databases.

Organization is only a bandaid if there are underlying problems. For example, I noticed that in my desire to answer emails quickly I tend to answer emails all day long. If I am answering emails all day that drops my efficiency tremendously since the emails usually require me to “do” something along with responding. So I asked myself what is the difference between spending 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening answering emails or answering emails all throughout the day? Logically, that would give me another 4 or 5 hours to complete other tasks without the distraction of email. But it’s the same email – my estimate of 2 hours in the morning and evening is inaccurate. When I respond to email during the day the situation is usually resolved the same day. If I changed to answering email in the morning and evening only, the things I usually resolve in one day would end up being spread across more than one day. Does that help my productivity? No.

The goal of reducing email response times really has a bigger goal: How do I educate people so they do not have to ask the question at all? How can people quickly find the answers they need?

Being able to zero in on the root issues will save you a lot of time in the long run.