Peace of Mind Organizing

Playing catch up

10 August 2010

As I mentioned last week I went on vacation last month. I was gone for eight days and though I know better, I didn’t really allow a day or two to catch up before jumping right back into work obligations.

I returned late Tuesday night and here it is Monday morning and I still haven’t quite finished unpacking. Or completed the laundry. Or gone through my physical inbox. (I did manage to get my email inbox in good shape quickly.)

So now I’m in a place where I need to use small pockets of time to play catch up. I had several meetings yesterday, and some time between them, so I used a couple of small pockets of time to go from behind to caught up so that I can spend the rest of the week making progress, rather than just catching up.

At 8:25 a.m. and I took a picture of my inbox.

That stack was in danger of falling over.

I had a phone meeting at 9:00 and at 8:25 I set a goal is to make a huge dent in the half hour prior to the meeting.

By 8:55 I’d made some progress. But I had to stop and have my meeting. Here’s the 8:55 shot:

Afte 30 minutes, almost finished!

My meeting ended at 10:05 and I jumped right back to my inbox, spending 10 more minutes to clear it out. The two things left in it I left there intentionally. Here’s the after photo:

After a total of 40 minutes...done!

Man, that feels better! I threw away a bunch of papers and added a few things to my to-do list (and put the corresponding papers in my tickler file). But now I know there’s nothing scary lurking in inbox. I’m feeling more caught up.

Staying on top of things like paper is the ideal. But when circumstances (like vacations) intervene and a backlog piles up, isolating the backlog and grabbing snippets of time to chip away at it can really work. I’m almost always surprised at how much I can get done in a half hour.

Tagged with: 15 minutes, backlog, paper piles, pockets of time, productivity

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