Business Word

Finding the Time
When Deadlines Are Looming, Prioritizing Your Work Gets the Job Done

by Anton Holland

OK, I admit it. I'm a time traveller.

When a deadline is fast approaching and I start to get the feeling that there is not enough time to complete it, I call up my friend Albert Einstein by Ouija board and say "Al? Need a bit of help with that temporal displacement thing you were working on. Gotta get from point A to point B without actually taking any time to do it."

I wish.

While it seems that I never have enough time to do everything that needs to be done, one way or another all the little jobs—and the big ones too—get completed. How do I do it? Perhaps it's some kind of subconscious control of the temporal world that allows me to bend the laws of the fourth dimension and find little pockets of time that don't really exist.

The truth is, it's a lot more mundane than that. It can be touchy. It's usually tenuous. But mostly it's hard work.

Prioritization. Easy to say, but not so easy to do. It's all about looking at all the things you have to do, and then figuring out which ones are the most important and must be done first. The problem is that these days, it seems that almost everything has to get done first.

Now, if we were battlefield surgeons instead of writers, we'd term this juggling act triage. Triage basically means figuring out who has the best chance of surviving, working on them first, and the rest...well you resign yourself to losing a few. Of course, as individuals working for a living as writers, we can't perform triage...everybody has to be "saved" or our careers die a bloody death on the battlefield.

So what can be done? The first thing to do is always think in terms of prioritization. It doesn't help to leave thoughts of prioritization until everything comes to a head, because at that point, although the priorities will be identified, there will be no way to deal with them. Priorities are constant, and will always be shifting; your list of priorities must shift in step.

OK, so you have a priority list, and you're reviewing it constantly. Your list will most likely consist of two basic types of jobs—big ones and little ones. What next? Most people, when faced with two or more jobs that are of equal priority, but differ only in their magnitude, tend to focus their efforts on the big job. Unfortunately, that leaves all the little jobs of equal priority still out there, buzzing around you like gnats on a sweltering summer day. They dive and nip, distracting you from the big job you're working on, ultimately making it impossible for you to concentrate properly. Take care of the little jobs, so your mind will be more at ease knowing that they are out of the way. If all the little jobs can't be done right away, at least you will have started them, and they will be much easier to return to when you need a break from the big job.

Of course, your decisions in this matter have to be tempered with your knowledge of the subtleties of each situation. But by having a plan, your decisions can be based on logic and reason, rather than blind panic and exhaustion.

Often, when pressed for time and having no plan for dealing with the demands placed on them, people tend to cut corners. For writers, this could mean cutting short valuable research activities, deciding not to bother with verifying key facts, or skipping crucial proofreading activities. It can all spell disaster, and that little bit of breathing room you thought you bought yourself at the time will hunt you down and give you nightmares in the long run when your careless mistakes are revealed.

Despite having prioritized your head off, there will inevitably be a situation in which there just isn't enough time to get everything done. When that happens, don't panic—delegate certain tasks (if you can), call for assistance from another member of your team, or, only as a last result, enquire whether the project schedule has any flexibility (don't tell anyone I said that!).

Like anything, it gets better with practice and experience. But I still think it would be easier if my clock had a "back" button.