A work re-work: time management

I've tried various organization techniques, such as blocking out time for functional areas of my job, trying to pre-schedule my weekly activities, etc. Unfortunately, those haven't really helped. For example, I find that when my calendar tells me that it's time to work on storage I don't know what I should be doing. I know there are things that need to be done, I don't know what I can do at the current time to actually move things forward.

That leads me to today. In an attempt to turn things around, I'm attempting to become better at managing my time. If I don't succeed, I think I'm going to suffer from major burnout. I've already had weeks where I just don't want to do anything at all.

My company has various online training courses, and I started with an online time management course. Unfortunately, it was targeted for people in a more traditional office job where they may have 5-10 major tasks to accomplish in a week, with maybe 20% change based on shifting requirements. Unfortunately, I've found IT to be quite different, with 50-80 smaller tasks to accomplish in a week, with 50-80% change based on shifting requirements.

I'm currently working my way through Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas Limoncelli. While I'm only about half way through the book, there are some valuable tips here. One of the most useful, I expect, is the Mutual Interruption Shield. If you work with other people, set aside times when you are not to be interrupted except in an emergency. The other person fields all questions and requests, which allows you to focus completely on the task at hand. Then you switch places. This gives both of you real focus time. He also advocates establishing routines. This allows you to get the routine work done without having to think about it. The author also provides a simple system for keeping track of tasks that need to get done, and when they're due.

I've also started reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. I'm not very far in, but this book seems a bit more philosophical. The organizational system that the author advocates is definitely more complex, but it may also be more robust. One of the core tenants of this system, as well as Time Management for System Administrators, is to get the lists of things to do out of your head and into some kind of trusted organizer. This can be paper or digital, just so long as it can be counted on.