Impact Management: The third dimension of Time Management

Time management techniques used by our ancestors are outdated in this decade. My father did great tasks management by handling multiple things, but his time management techniques can't be applied straight away in my working pattern. Time have changed and so has the fast pace of life and requirements to fulfill a task. 

Calendars, To DO list apps  (wunderlist, keep, todoist, asana... the list is endless), Trello, Slack have all piled up unwanted tasks and distraction. We are living in a flat world with an affinity to connect on a global scale. We all have endless to do list and and no matter how hard we try, there will be something left behind. We always exhaust ourselves to be more productive but we always end up with pending items on professional front and not find time to reach home for dinner. 

What is the formula for this? Our conventional time management have two dimensions: 

1. Tasks

2. Priorty (Urgency)

But lately, its funny that, it turned out that all tasks are in priority. There is a third dimensions they are talking about:

3. Impact.

Most of the task we have in the to do list are often distractions and could be delayed until tasks which are making impact on the longer run are to be fixed.  We need to conserve our energy for the tasks which creates more impact. This implies impact management is more related to energy management for the time and energy we put in our tasks. 

Does it have to go to the to do list? 

A task which hardly takes 2-5 minutes should not go to a todo list. Have a time in your calendar to do these random things. As you pile up things in your Todo list, its going to bloat and will create a depression in your subconscious mind for to much of a work still in pendancy

Always think about the impact of this task:

Never defer the task which will make impact on a longer run for subsequent months. If I know an employee is going on a leave, I should take a discussion on priority for completion of pending tasks of that employee and hand off in her absence. Procrastination will lead to more work piled up when actual event will occur. Similarly testing a web app on multiple browser right now will ensure I dont get a call from the customer in coming days for incompatibility of the application made.  Because working on compatibility then will affect my other tasks then when I am done with the earlier project and working on other projects. This leads to frustration and eventually delay of most of the work and longer working hours and hence affecting productivity

Your personal front also impacts

Your happiness on the personal front will impact the creativity at work. Dont forget to put a mark on your calendar for impact of activities which will ensure happiness of your loved ones and then eventually yours. 

This third dimension and a proper equation between the other two dimensions will ensure a proper channeling of tasks unless there is a fourth dimension of distraction management. 

Feel free to share your stories. 

Sincerely, 

Parth J Joshi