About Dan Markovitz
Dan Markovitz is the founder and president of TimeBack Management. Prior to founding his own firm, Mr. Markovitz held management positions at Sierra Designs, Adidas, CNET and Asics Tiger. Learn More...
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Leveling; smoothing out the flow; e.g., doing two performance evaluations a day for 3 weeks, rather than ten a day for three days -- and then needing to take a vacation because you're so burned out.
Overburdening people, process, or equipment; e.g., people working 100 hour weeks for months on end -- come to think of it, like most lawyers and accountants.
Uneveness or variability; e.g., leaving work at the normal time on Thursday, but having to stay at the office till midnight on Friday because the boss finally got around to giving you that project...at 4:30pm.
Waste; activities that your customer doesn't value and doesn't want to pay for; e.g., billing your customer for the really expensive 10am FedEx delivery because you didn't finish the document on time.
Great post
Dan -- I've been using this strategy for quite some time. I used to (back to PalmPilot days) keep separate to-do lists and calendar. Palm had the feature of setting due dates for tasks on the to-do list and I realized I really just needed the calendar.
I use the same method in Outlook (and Blackberry sync) today. When I get a request from a colleague, lets say for a presentation they want in two weeks, I know I don't need to start it "now." I put a reminder on my calendar for some time out, even (as you suggested) carving out time for it.
Now I need to quit multitasking during that carved out time!
Mark
www.leanblog.org