How do you manage time effectively?

MJ

I struggle with time management. I am always stressing about the next thing. Over the last year I started consciously working towards doing things to help reduce stress and help keep me on top of things.

1. I allot time to plan my week.
• I fly out to the client on Sunday nights. I dedicate the first half hour of the flight to just thinking and writing down what to expect the week ahead.
2. I put stickies on my laptop to remind me of deadlines
• This helps me glance over to ensure that I have the deadlines under control
3. I try to set up auto pay for bills
• I don't like to miss monthly bill deadlines. I find auto pay very convenient
4. I do expenses before dinner on Monday nights.
• I am hungry and tired. I get through expenses and reward myself with an awesome meal.
5. I force myself to reply to email immediately. I find that if I put those away I end up procrastinating. Being prompt on email is very appreciated at work and in personal life.
6. I plan to get all my work related commitments done during the week. I like to keep weekends completely personal. This means I really push myself during the week and end up having to give up on going out to eat every night etc but this system works for me.

Tools I love:

• Evernote (they had me at auto syncing)
• A moleskin journal and an amazing pen I always have with me
• At home I have 3 small colorful white boards to help me organize tasks

Linda

Every morning I read through everything in both my personal and work Gmail inboxes, take care of what is urgent, and put things I need to do but can't do right then onto my personal Trello board.

My Trello sections, in order (ordered this way both because I have more sections than I have screen real estate, and because the leftmost one is what comes up first when you open the Android app- therefore the one I want to use on the go is the one that I put on the left:)

• Goals for the next six months (run workshop on [X], post blog on [Y])
• Review (stuff I want to do sometime- like do the entire Rails Zombies sequence on CodeSchool, read the book Testable JavaScript)
• Now (stuff I am currently working on and don't want to forget, like expensing my hotel bill, picking up a package, and doing my OOBootcamp homework)
• Done (this is my brag list and I archive everything in it every two weeks or so)
• status (this, combined with the Done list, is what I brag about to my TW People Person or coach every few weeks)
• Do Later (this includes goals for longer than the six-month term, like "go scuba diving", "go to Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing" and "get LASIK")

I rely on my Google calendar to tell me when I have lunch meetings, after-work events, home office days, and plane flights. I rely on my teammates (and I guess my client-email-system Outlook calendar) to remind me of team events like IPM and retro, although these are very regular and easy to remember.

Rose

I find that I manage time best when feeling a little bit of pressure/stress. Too much induces panic, too little laziness. Just the right amount of that ominous “I should probably get this done...” feeling is what kicks me into action and lets me maximize my productivity.

I’ve picked up a few tips and tricks along the way for keeping myself in that sweet spot of feeling motivated to do work. They work for me; as always, your mileage may vary.

• Writing things down has a different effect from typing it out. Maybe I am just old school but I find comfort in the feeling of ink on paper. I also tend to remember things better that way. Most of my to-do’s, reminders, and other scraps of words are captured in a notebook that is always in my backpack or by my side.
• Routine is key. Setting an expectation with yourself for accomplishing recurring tasks is the best way I know to keep the regular ebb and flow of work at a manageable level. For example, every Monday night I go on a run with my coworkers. When I go back to the hotel, I make dinner and do expenses. It’s not rocket science, but it works, and my brain appreciates the consistency.
• Timeboxing, timeboxing, timeboxing. When you are juggling multiple priorities in a limited amount of time, it’s wise to sit down before and think to yourself, “how much time should I be spending on this?” I admit to sometimes getting analysis paralysis and obsessing over the details for way too long; telling myself I only have an hour to look at task XYZ helps me focus and place some artificial pressure on myself to go for the low hanging fruit within any project.
• Don’t neglect sleep. It’s easy to let your work send you into the wee hours of the morning. But too often we underestimate the importance of clear thinking from a well-rested brain - and we feel the pain the next day when we are groggy and unfocused. I believe that the immediate gain of a few hours of time is not worth the next day’s diminished returns. The brain is like a muscle; overusing it without sufficient time for it to mend and restore itself is bad news bears. Give it the same rest and respect that you would the rest of your body.

How does work-life balance on travelling projects work?

Linda Goldstein

As a travelling consultant, I commute via plane every week to a city where I know very few people other than my coworkers, so we naturally hang out and explore the city. 

I am very much in take-advantage mode when it comes to attending events on this project; there are too many for any one person to do, so I pick the interesting ones. On a large project there are always sub-groups of people going to the movies, to the grocery, a running trail, yoga, rock-climbing, dinner...

Sometimes the client developers come in super-early (6am, anyone?) and leave equivalently early. (A common reason for this is to avoid bad rush-hour traffic.) This can limit the amount of time you get to spend together as a team and make problem-solving later in the afternoon more difficult. It also means the team has more "temporal coverage" which can be important if some of your most important customers work early in the morning, or are in a different time zone. 

Many people bring lunch to work; some eat at their desks. Some take longer lunch breaks. If my pair says "I'm not taking lunch today because I'm leaving at 1:30 anyway," what do I do? Do I take a regular lunch? Do I hurry my lunch or postpone it to try to get more pairing time in? As always, it depends... Mostly I don't want to let the work stall because one person is out of the office.

It is very easy to prevent yourself from saving time to sleep and exercise adequately. As a travelling consultant with a great team, I need never have a dull moment again. But sometimes I need to make some dullness for myself. :)

Amanda Snyder

One of the most important goals for a company should be to provide a healthy work/life balance for each employee. This became even more important when I began on travel projects. However, the company can only do so much. 

The more important part has become the people, and for me it is about being with people who can still surprise me at the end of the day. The people who really care about something and can introduce you to an activity or group that you may never have tried before. 

However, it can easily become exhausting trying to optimize each weekend with travel, and get to know each city when you only have so much time during the week. I have found that planning so far in advance takes up much of my time, and trying to have events during the week with work and then all weekend is too much to handle. 

I have found a nice balance in keeping to a strict schedule a few nights a week, having a running night or a night dedicated to expenses, a night just for cooking dinner each week. Then it’s just as important to have nights dedicated for exploring new events, going to dinner, and being with others. This schedule, however, relies on having those passionate people, who are willing to plan an event once in awhile, and help out to take the weight of planning off my shoulders.  


Abby Bangser

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” 
― Confucius

While this is a very famous saying, I am not sure I agree. I think that loving what you do is different than trying to make a living from what you love. While that is a very fine line, it is what allows me to have a work life balance. After changing careers into software development I have found enormous enjoyment in staying late to problem solve that tricky nice-to-have, spending all night getting caught up in a side project that will never see the light of day and getting lost in the rabbit holes that are links within articles. This makes my hours “on the job” where I am improving my skills and becoming a better software consultant add up fast.

But having my true loves be outside the scope of my job allows me to always get those necessary breaks. These range from an hour at the gym each day, to evenings at the theater or a sporting event, all they way to week long vacations to go scuba diving. What makes consultant life so perfect for someone with these diverse interests, is the diversity of people and work sites that continue to fuel so many rewarding activities. My suggestion for everyone would be to treat their current home towns like a travelling consultant would. Never take the museums, concert venues, sports teams or simply walking around and taking everything in for granted as they help tear you away from your desk when you are closing in on that 12 hour day.

Kate M

I often get asked about how being a traveling consultant affects my life. There are of course many perks to traveling, but the challenge comes when you get off work in a city foreign to you. How do you constantly readjust being in a new environment, with no roots? Some thrive off the challenge and some feel gradually drained by the effort of constantly calling a new place home.

Everyone is in a unique position, however. It's an ever-interesting mix of family, responsibilities, friends, and hobbies which makes juggling life difficult as a traveling consultant. I am one for creating roots, so it has been an interesting journey for me. I easily make a new place my home in little time. I initially keep myself busy by exploring. I stay weekends instead of going home. As time goes by, I find spots I like (that sometimes remind me of home) and I create roots. I live in the city rather than just visiting. I become at home because I know the streets and places. I let myself be engulfed in a city.  At some point I act more like a local than someone who's only going to be there a few months. For me its about making the most of the hours after work.

I also know that when I want to stay in a place somewhere (and I have a tendency to fall in love with cities) that it is always an option. When I am ready, and when I want to have a little deeper roots. Everything is what you make it, and I make every place my home. Having a place called home is important to me. It's what helps me find that normalcy that I am missing. That comfort and that feeling of being somewhere familiar. 

And that's how I make it work for me, and I know it might not one day. Which might mean change but might not.