Centolire Cafe Panini
Photo: Cititour.com
Contact Info:
Address: 1167 Madison Ave (86th St)
City: New York, NY
Zip: 10028
map: View the Map
Phone: (212) 734-7711
Website: http://www.pinoluongo.com/CentolireCafeandPanini.html
Food Info:
Menu: View the Menu
Cuisine:
Italian
2nd Cuisine:
Sandwiches
Location:
Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap
Comments:
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Such a relatable post Tom! I too was thinking about it this week. In my case, sometimes there were either no such major tasks/projects to work on or suddenly there were too many tasks to deal with, all at once. And every team requesting the deliverable wanted their document completed as soon as possible. Deadlines were vague, not clearly communicated sometimes or maybe documentation isn't still considered important enough to allocate proper time for.
Your suggested solution is helpful, maybe somewhat similar to mine. I jot things down about which tasks are to be done first and which tasks are to be dealt with later, crudely sort of, in the morning when there is quiet and no distractions. Yet, this multi-tasking thing boggles my mind now and then.
You say it right here, my friend:
I was like, damn, I stopped the world to focus on your project, lost all my context and momentum with Project A, and now after two months I need to pause this effort, leave all my docs in draft form unpublished, and return to the original project I was working on? WTF people…
That seems to be the sorry state at most of the companies I worked. I don't see a way out, when companies underfund technical writing at the correct time. For example, in one role I proposed to my director that I get involved at the business analysis/requirements definition phase, so QA could have business use cases as acceptance criteria to test the technical features against. I was told, "We're not funded that way."
So instead, I had to document use cases for a product where the developers met a technical criteria that passed QA testing, but served no business value. C'est la vie!
Brilliant post Tom. My self-imposed strategy is, as much as possible, use the time from 9 am to 10 am to review what I did the previous day and reload my memory. It works somewhat because I forbid myself to have coffee until ten and it gives me an incentive to get back up to speed, and get ready to plow into the day after I have my coffee at 10:00. I use my bad habits to an advantage to get things done.
To be honest, I don't know of any other way to work. Along with my techcomm work, I do a lot of automation-related things — XSLT or awk scripts, Schematron rules, complex searches (we have a CCMS). Then at home, I write fiction and automation stuff related to that!
I like to say I have a memory like a steel sieve, and I have come back to a complex scripting project after months doing other stuff and say "now how the heck did this work?" I've developed several forms of mental swap, to get my brain back in the game.
One-liner things, like that cool Xpath expression I figured out, go in the outliner where I keep my weekly action list and longer-term goals and action items. It's always up in a window, so I don't have to remember how to find it.
For email, I use the GTD methodology of using @ACTIONS and @WAITING_FOR folders and keeping my inbox clear (I'm not always too good about that part). Part of my Friday afternoon routine is planning next week's actions; I review those folders and add relevant items to my weekly actions. It can be something as simple as "ask Tim if he looked at the XYZ docs" or something with a lot of sub-tasks. An outliner is really handy for the latter.
Finally, scripting things that are bigger than one-liners get a NOTES file.
The fiction stuff is unique, and a little scary — somehow, I contain these worlds in my head and keep everything straight. I have NO clue how that works.
Tom, great article and very timely for me. I was complaining about this very thing earlier today. I find the same to be true for exercise. Do it every day, and you always have the time, but, put it off, and it will be difficult to get going again.
Thanks for the ideas about how to juggle multiple projects.