Peace of Mind Organizing

Declare a backlog

27 October 2008

One of the many strategies offered by Mark Forster in his time-management book Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management (link at right) is the concept of declaring a backlog. (I wrote about some of his other strategies last June in the blog posts, Getting started and Keeping going.)

When you’re behind in your work, Forster suggests, declare a backlog and clear the decks. If it’s paperwork you’re behind on, gather it all up and put it in a box marked Backlog. Then make clearing that backlog a priority in the coming days, while processing the new incoming work in a timely manner. Same goes for old emails, old phone calls, any work that’s piling up. In Forster’s system, “a timely manner” means doing today all the work that came in yesterday.

I did this just last week. My pile in my inbox was large enough that it had become daunting and I found myself avoiding dealing with it. I dumped the whole thing into my “backlog” box: an attractive linen-covered box with a lid. I told myself I’d work on it 15 minutes a day until it was empty. I didn’t know how many days that would take, but knowing that I only had to work on it 15 minutes at a time made it seem very doable.

At the beginning of the day, I pulled out that box (which I stored in a closet with similar boxes), dealt with each piece of paper as I came to it and stopped when my Time Timer said the fifteen minutes was up.

The best part—and this happens most of the time, I find—is that it took a lot less time than I expected: only two 15-minute sessions.

Declaring a backlog help keeps your environment clutter-free so you can focus on what’s coming in. It also gives you a mechanism to deal with the backlog. And it employs the concept of doing a little bit at a time, but doing it often, as you chip away at your backlog.

If you find yourself falling behind, I heartily recommend giving it a try!

Tagged with: backlog, mark forster, productivity, time management

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