John Linton .....doesn't get enough done in any given day and that method of 'conducting' a business day is a distant memory. Today their are multiple demands for 'management review and action' that make true multi-tasking an essential aspect of running a company of Exetel's size essential.
I had worked the same way for many years up to a year or so ago - basing my working day on a constantly modified (added to and subtracted from as tasks are completed) 'to do list'. Since email became a major part of business working life I have added responding to emails 'immediately' they arrive between 6.30 am and 10.30 pm to that regime. The other thing that 'demanded' changing from a self created list has been the development of a second by second reporting system of all aspects of Exetel's processes and activities. One thing I have stopped doing is to answer the telephone very often and days may go by without me answering either my mobile or my office extension. I can't remember when I 'adopted' the regime of a 'to do list' but it must have been in my early days at IBM in the 1970s because I fairly clearly remember that early to do lists were written on the reverse side of an unused 'punched card' which was exactly the right size to fit in the inside left hand pocket of a business suit jacket.
Today, I wouldn't know where, or if, a 'punched card' (almost certainly very few people who might read this musing would know what a 'punched card' was) could be found and the number of times I would wear a suit in a year could be counted on the fingers of one hand. So these days I simply rely on my memory and the constant flow of 'reminders' that email from various sources constantly provides together with the 'tyranny' of Exetel's internal reporting systems that provide a second by second status of everything I, or anyone else, has asked to be reported on together with the 'alarms' for out of line situations from bandwidth usage on the most obscure link in our network, through the performance against set objectives of every person who works in our company to the second by second reporting of the receipt of new orders for every one of our services.
So rather than referring to the hand writing on a piece of thin cardboard every so often during the 'week days' to determine what I needed to do my day is now 'run' by the stream of information on a computer screen any time I care to look at it. This information appears in various structured and ad hoc enquiry reports that we have been developing since before we actually commenced operating Exetel as a supplier of data services and has been constantly developed in scope and 'sophistication' ever since and shows no sign of requiring any less effort today than when we started doing it. Included in these feedback mechanisms are suggestions by customers and the multiple times a day I check the Exetel forum.So, apart from the few 'permanent' daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly reviews my day, of whatever length I 'choose' to work, is totally run by screen based reports, emails and other information provided via a screen connected to the Exetel data base....a very different scenario to the decades long use of a self created and updated to do list.
So it was surprising to me when I created the first 'to do' list I can remember earlier this morning on an A4 sheet of paper folded in three to vaguely resemble the dimensions of a punched card and not having a suit jacket pocket to put it in I folded it in half and out it in the pocket of my chinos. I don't know what lead me to do this - approaching senility or some misplaced nostalgia for the days when your week's work consisted of less than a dozen or so items you could describe in a few words each and you could gain great satisfaction as you crossed them out as the week progressed.
Those were the days.
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