One Thing at a Time

Over at MPD they’re talking about doing one project at a time. Recently, I have been doing this at work as well. I schedule out which things I am working on each day, and I try to keep it to one large task, or two smalls tasks. This gives enough padding to achieve the 80% “committed” the article talks about. If you’re spread all over hell going 100% all the time, the very next interruption will ruin everything. You’re next three projects will all be late and poor quality.

This is exactly one of the things I went into our last meeting asking. “How can we not run the ship at 100%?” No one came up with a specific answer. However, the guy responsible for deadline scheduling responded perfectly. Deadlines got pushed out. It allowed for an 80% commitment, allowed for interruptions, allowed you to take your hour of lunch, and allowed you to punch out at five – like you should. Hopefully it can allow for innovation, solving problems the right way, and a boost to morale.