Identify and avoid falling into an interrupt-driven time management work model – what I did!

It seems like the last week to 10 days has been like trying to walk up hill in molasses in the winter time.  Ever have days like that?

It’s felt like the most unproductive 10 days in the world. And when you work from home and feel this way, well it’s not a good thing.

At first I thought, maybe being on this diet has zapped my energy, but that should have happened earlier not 6 months into it (oh and by the way and for the record – 50+ pounds gone! – ok there is my yay-me- moment) . Then I thought, hmm, maybe it’s the fact I had a migraine this week, recovering from those is often worse than a hangover.  I thought well, maybe, it’s because my husband, Pete Graner,  isn’t home and the kids are–Spring Break this week–maybe I am a slightly distracted.  No that wasn’t it either, I mean Pete travels all the time, and well my kids have been helping my mom and dad this week.  Determined not to have one more unproductive molasses kinda day, I wanted to figure out what the heck was going on.

While I felt like I was being unproductive, I’ve really gotten things done, not necessarily all the things I had planned; however, when I started writing down the things I did accomplish  it was certainly more than I realized. However, as I tracked my day, what I learned was, I had somehow managed to get out of my routine and found myself in an “interrupt-driven” model of managing my time.  (Note, this is not ideal). Once I realized this, I needed to follow the advice Linaro CTO, David Rusling, who has the opportunity from time to time to say to me, “Amber, when you are in a hole, put the shovel down!”  So, there I was in the hole of reaction instead of leaping over tall building in a single being proactive and since I do try to take good advice from people I respect, I decided to “put the shovel down”.

I went for a walk.  After only 20 minutes of sunshine and a nice tall glass of cold water, I felt refreshed and ready to figure out how to get back on track. Amazing what some sunshine and H2O will do for your body and mind.

The first thing I did was figure out what I had accomplished, then what I still needed to finish before Friday afternoon (when I leave for the Indiana LinuxFest).  I also needed to figure out what my routine should be and where I got off track at, and put some “guard rails” in place to avoid this in the future. From there I needed to prioritize my todo list and get ready to kick ass get it all done.

I get asked how I manager to get things done, well I don’t get it all done as you can see.  Normally, it’s not my work where it’s noticed, it’s my family and friends who notice because I am not being very social. This time; however, I noticed it across the board.

Chip Camden, in his 2009 Tech Republic, Avoid the interrupt-driven model of time management article says,  “During the short intervals when I wasn’t being driven by interruptions, I would often find it hard to get started on my big projects, knowing that I would soon be interrupted again.”  I read that and thought, how it had a familiar ring to it, especially during these last 10 days. When you work from home, for an open-source tech company some of your day will be interrupt-driven it’s the nature of the beast; however, allowing your whole day to be that way without structure can often make you feel overwhelmed and unproductive.

In his article, Camden highlights 4 points to help avoid this molasses interrupt-driven model of time management. His advice for as David says,  “putting down the shovel” includes:

• Make interruptions the exception rather than the rule
• Allocate large chunks of time to individual projects
• Don’t take on too many projects
• Reserve time for self-improvement

He goes into more detail on each of these in his article and each one of these made complete sense to me.  Kinda like an “Ah-Hah” moment.  I took Camden’s advice and that of other community managers and friends, along with advice from various working from home guides, and was able to craft a personal plan for success (or at least I think so anyway). (Here are links to the working from home guides I’ve read: Working From Home: A Survivor’s Guide and Our Chicago Editor’s Guide To Working From Home Keep in mind if you are currently in a work from home job, the company you work for probably has its own guide as well.  If you aren’t familiar with it then email your HR Director/Manager and ask for the link to it.)

One change I am making is to set and stick to some core hours and communicate those hours to my boss and others.   I really like how Zach Pfeffer, Linaro Android Tech Lead, structures his day.  He seems to be everywhere all the time, but he really isn’t online 24/7; he also has time to spend with his family, enjoy his hobbies etc.  I thought I accomplished a lot until I started working at Linaro and got to know Zach.  Zach really follows his own advice of setting core hours and sticking to them. I had the opportunity to talk to the Linaro Android team via Google+ Hangouts on Air about how they work, what it’s like working from home and what are some of the challenges they face.  If you want to see what they had to say, you can watch the video here.

Since my my direct boss, Steve Taylor, is in the UK and I am a morning person, starting my day at 5 am (give or take an hour) makes sense.  Pete also works for a UK based company and likes to start his day earlier as well, so it works for us.  It also works for our kids, as they have to be at school before 7:30am and they have to get up around 5am as well. And like my co-worker Zach, it makes sense for me to break up my day to cover the afternoons and into the evenings.  Especially, when my kids have practice or other after-school activities.

Also treating my email like I do my mail.  Touch it once, and act on it when I read it.   I somehow got in the habit of marking which emails I needed to go back and deal with and as a result, the replies weren’t the quality I prefer.  So now I get up, check my email, answer them and move on to the next thing.  From there I search for internet for Linaro stuff, to see if new articles, blogs,  tweets, Facebook comments, G+ +1’s etc have been added since the night before.  I also look at our partner, member and member board communities and determine what to do if anything with that information.

From there it’s on to the bigger more time consuming projects and tasks, for example this week – finishing my keynote talk, continuing to work on a community engagement plan, blogging, reviewing wiki pages, getting ready for UDS as well as the Q2.12 Linaro Connect along with the various meetings, calls etc.

When lunch time rolls around, and I pop back over to my email, and run my internet search again.  I do this one more time before I end my day as well. When I break for lunch I usually return any personal phone calls and emails, and throw a load of laundry in the washer/dryer and tidy up a bit around the house. I also manage to grab a bite to eat as well.  (Side note: Did you know that the average commercial on TV is 4 minutes long. I read that in an article in a parenting magazine.  The article gave suggestions on things you could do during the commercials to help a busy mom stay on top of those domestic chores.  I still use 4-5 minute burst to accomplish those boring yet necessary tasks like laundry and unloading the dishwasher)

I’m also working on making sure I add anything unfinished from the day before to my todo list for the next day before I end my day. At Linaro we use Rypple to keep track of goals and accomplishments.  I am still not using it as effectively as I should be, but thanks to our HR Director, Mike Levine, (and others) we now have a best-practice guide so a goal of mine is to become more comfortable and efficient at using this really cool tool.

I hope you don’t have the kind of week I’ve had, but if you do or if you’ve been looking for ways to establish a better routine while working from home, I hope this helps. Feel free to share your ideas on this as well.