Buried Up To Your Neck?

 

Yeah, me too.

So how do we get out of the sand trap in a dynamic environment where it seems like you are being pulled in a thousand directions at once?

It's not easy, but here are some of the things I do and am trying to do to stay on solid ground.

Kanban

Personal Kanban and team Kanban.  It's wonderful, I love it so much!  It helps me manage what's going on right now and in the near future for both of my teams, myself at the day job, and for myself at my pmStudent.com office.  Yep, I have 4 Kanban boards total.

I won't go into what it is and how I use it here since I've posted already about Kanban, but feel free to check these out to learn more.

Meetings

They need to be effective.  That means focus, having the exact people who add or gain value (no more or less), and as short as possible.  Help your team and yourself escape from meeting hell.

Email

Only check it at a few scheduled times during the day.  Turn notifications off.  When you do check it, everything that can be resolved in a few minutes is done immediately, everything else goes into your personal task management system (mine is Kanban).  I have a filter which shows me only unread email, and each time I check it, my email box goes to 0 unread messages.  No folders for me, everything stays in the inbox but is out of my sight because it's unread.  I've tried a lot of things, but for me this email management system has shown itself to be the best.

What do you do to keep your head above the sand?

photo by Pink Sherbet Photography