Work Like Your Hair’s on Fire - (Project Management)

I’ve been working on a post about my obsessive time-management practices, but I just had to post this bit from Seth Godin’s blog (via Joel Spolsky’s excellent “Joel on Software” blog). It’s a pretty simple concept - if you’re struggling to get something done, say, a new Web site for example, treat it like it’s something that absolutely must be done now. Act as if your hair’s on fire and you gotta put it out now, now and now. Dedicate that time you’d use on other, lower priority stuff (like that obsession with checking email every five minutes) to getting this one thing done. Nothing else…just this one thing. When you’re finally done, you’ll honestly be surprised at how simple it all was, and surprised at how you put off something that you could’ve gotten done a lot earlier and quicker if you’d just focused completely on it. I do this pretty often with projects that I just don’t want to do, and I have to say, it really works. Proving once again, my argument that multitasking is a bad idea. “Do one thing, do it well, move to the next…don’t do 10 things half-heartedly, and you’ll get more done with a lot better work quality” - that’s what I say.