In praise of mono tasking

It’s been a while since my last update. A long while, in fact – this will be my fist website update since September 2023. The reason? 
Life. 
Mid-September I decided to step away from the website for a while. Many of my hobbies (writing fiction; playing guitar: recording with GarageBand; building guitars and tinkering with effects pedals; even going to the gym) had taken a back seat to other commitments. 
Work exploded. We lost a manager, necessitating my taking over his project. I have certainly had to put my change management chops to the test, with my initial QA audit finding improvements I needed to make in every area. It’s added an extra eight hours’ driving a week to my schedule. This has been in addition to my regular duties as a director. In situations like this, there is a choice between complaining about the workload, or seeking and growing from the learning opportunities on offer. I have to say that these additional responsibilities have reminded me of all that I’ve missed about frontline management (as well as all the things I haven’t!). We’ve also had a change in senior management, offering further opportunities to learn, grow, and contribute. 
Then there was the diabetes diagnosis, which has necessitated more planning in how and what I prepare and eat, especially on the days I’m travelling two hours two and from work. 
My progress through my level seven senior leadership qualification continues unabated, and already it’s time to start thinking about my end point assessment, essentially a business proposal containing the most important elements of the previous eighteen months’ learning. It’s not due until September, but the prep starts now. 
Our chair of governors (I’m the safeguarding governor for a local primary school) left, leaving his position vacant. I’d been on the board of governors for several months and found the whole process a little disjointed. I thought that being chair would be a bit more involved. Let’s say my habit of understating things like that is at least consistent. 
I’m also contending with the worst landlord I’ve ever rented from – a bar so low only professional limbo dancers need apply. The amount of time and effort needed to get emails acknowledged, let alone anything significant done through them is unreal. 
All of which has meant I’ve not been able to keep up to date with my blog and book reviews. 
It also means I’ve had to rethink my approach to organising myself and my commitments. 
At one point I was managing two Outlook accounts for work, on the work laptop; my personal Gmail account, together with a mish-mash of Dropbox, Evernote and OneDrive on my personal Macbook; my personal google calendar on my phone; my governor’s Onedrive/Outlook account; and whichever notebook I happened to have on me at any given time. Not only was this an atrocious way of collating and organising information, it also meant I was trying to juggle various commitments at any given time – writing a work email that reminded me of something I needed to notify the head of, jumping from online diary to online diary to see where I could fit an online meeting; and generally feeling pulled in a dozen different directions at once. 
FYI, there’s no such thing as multitasking. It’s a lie. The human brain can’t do it. You can’t engage in a book and a film at the same time. You can’t do deep-focus writing whilst really listening to music. You can’t (insert any activity of choice here) and drive at the same time. 
So I took back control, in a way far more successful than Brexit will ever be. It started with the realisation that I didn’t have a time management problem - I had a focus and concentration management problem. Whatever I was doing, there was always something else I could be doing, new tasks and ideas appearing out of nowhere, or the feeling I should be doing something else. Damn, did I remember to check all my diaries after agreeing to that meeting? And who’s emailing me now the middle of writing this email? 
Firstly, I took the luddite approach of ditching all the online calendars. Well, not entirely. I still accept Teams and Zoom calls via email invites. But I purchased a week-to-view diary insert for my trusty old Filofax (and I mean, really old: a bargain-bin impulse buy from Llanelli Tesco back when I was still in uni, so about 2002 at the latest). All my appointments for work, governing, my level seven and my personal life are written in there. Now I have only one place to look when someone says, “Tuesday’s no good for me so can we do Wednesday”. And then decides that, actually, the cat’s pedicure was Wednesday, sorry, can we do Tuesday after all? [pro tip: use a lot of pencil for appointments]. That step alone really streamlined the process. 
Then I bought a lot of paper inserts and dividers for the Filofax. This allows me to keep a running to-do list/weekly planner with me at all times. I generally outline this on a Friday or Sunday evening, and add to it through the week. This is used to remind me to chase up emails, make calls, etc. It’s not a planner for larger tasks. This means I generally complete all the tasks by Friday, and can put it in the bin at the end of the week. It’s surprising how effective this is for a sense of achievement. I own a few Lamy Safari pens in different colours, and tend to use blue for work, red for governance, and green for my L7 and personal tasks. This sheet is one of several paper-clipped together; the others consist of ongoing project notes that I need to keep handy. For example, we are currently looking at how to improve our induction and onboarding process. We have had a few online meetings about this, as well as a number of emails. I keep these notes handy whilst this is something that’s still ongoing. When I drop by the project I’m managing I usually have a few specific things I need to achieve (I’m only there twice a week at most), so I keep notes on the most important things I need to do. These systems keep me focused on the task at hand whilst also giving me a space to ‘dump’ whatever ideas or non-urgent tasks that come to mind. I don’t have to deal with every email as it arrives, nor start a task before I forget [another pro tip: turn off email notifications, and schedule regular times throughout the day to deal with emails. If it’s urgent, they’ll phone. If it’s not, then it’s a distraction from whatever you should be focussing on right now]. 
The dividers are the plastic type, with sticky labels to identify the topic. These are a fluid element of my organisation. For example, we have to upcoming projects, one in Cardiff and one in West Wales, so each of these gets a section. As we get closer to realising the projects these notes will not be enough, and so I will relabel the sections for whatever is relevant at the time. 
Finally, I was bought for Xmas a Traveller’s Company leather notebook cover and inserts. At the moment it has three notebooks inside. One I use for general notes and ideas (fiction ideas, character/plot/short story outlines, ideas for guitar projects, films and music I want to check out, and the like). Five minutes on YouTube will show you what a rabbit-hole journalling with the Traveller’s Company notebook can be – thankfully I’ve no interest in that, and am content to use it simply as a notebook. I may even take out the two additional inserts and keep one in at a time. 
I’ve found this method makes it much easier to keep track of and prioritise tasks. It also helps me maintain focus on one thing at a time. 
If you have any productivity tips or ideas, let me know. ​

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