You ever have those really busy weeks where you still end up with more work at the end than you started with? It seems like most of my crazy busy weeks are like that and I spend the weekend just trying to get back to neutral. Somehow this week was the opposite – the really busy week but somehow on Friday I find myself almost ahead of the curve. Not sure how it happened but it did.
It goes back to the philosophy of not worrying about the quantity of work that needs to get done – simply focusing on the tasks that are most important and doing what you can, when you can. Working without worrying about everything that you aren’t dealing with yet can be stressful. That feeling of knowing someone isn’t happy that their project isn’t number 1 can be a tough one to get past.
The other thing helping me is a new email management philosophy. My email inbox must be empty before I’m allowed to leave for the day. Read and completed emails get filed into their designated folders (I’m up to about 200 nested folders for various topics) or filed into the “Active Tasks” folder for items that still need to be addressed. It takes a little bit of time but it has really helped with my time and task management; more than I ever expected it to. Additionally it has tremendously helped my state of mind – I no longer have that feeling of not knowing if there is something hidden in the inbox that I still need to get to.
I’m not saying to do things like me – just saying to give your personal organizational method a thought. Changing what you do can be a huge benefit.