Getting the Work Done - Time Management

October 1, 2006

Time management is a bit of an art, but it is something every webmaster has to be pretty good at. Let’s face it - running a website can and usually does take a lot of time. Most webmasters usually work full-time jobs at the same time, working on their websites at night or over the weekend. There is a need to properly manage your time and steer your efforts so you can get the work done. Even if you are a full-time webmaster, the importance is still there. I no longer work for anybody. I run my own business as a webmaster. I ALWAYS have more to do on any given day than I have time for. The trick is to spend my available time on actions that will get the most done per unit of time. So, yes, this article is not going to be a technical one. But, sometimes, it is good to step back and look at the big picture.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is a key component of your time management. What I mean by “strategic planning” is to sit down and develop a “big picture” plan on how to approach your website, get your projects done, or expand the site. How does one go about this? First, you need to develop and write down your primary goal. Perhaps your goal is to 2X your site’s traffic. Perhaps your goal is to raise your income up to certain figure or up to a point where you can afford to quit your day job. Great. Now, figure out how to put your goal into words and write it down.

Strategic planning is done in order to provide guidance to all of the activities involved. It serves as a central strategy which, like an umbrella, covers all the activities of the lower echelons. So, with your stated purpose in mind and written down, you develop a series of steps to execute in order to make that purpose become true.

Let’s look at an example strategic plan. I will take the release of Miraserver 2.0 (some of you are familiar with this project). My goal here is to release a stable and powerful Miraserver 2.0 to the broad public so that I can engage in the marketing aspect of the product. See, first things first, here. I cannot move forward with the marketing because the product is not done and released. So, with that goal, here is the basic outline of my strategic plan:

Develop a final spec list for the feature set of Miraserver 2.0.
Developers work diligently to complete this final spec list
Release to the public as a beta product
Re-design and re-launch the Miraserver.com website, while simultaneously handling reported issues with Miraserver 2.0.
Compile 2.0 into the final release, release and announce.

Now, each of the steps can get into a lot more detail. However, strategic planning is there to create the strategy. Then, we move into tactical planning.

Tactical Planning

Tactical planning takes the strategic plan and translates that into a series of doable actions in order to achieve the steps of the strategic plan. Tactical works to make one of the overall plans come to reality. Strategic planning is done to bring it all together to achieve the main goal.

In essence, this is management. Management is not about putting out fires. If a manager is spending all their time putting out fires, then it is because things have already organizationally gone downhill.

So, for example, let’s take the first step of my strategic plan above and break it down into tactical steps:

Install Miraserver 2.0 to new, blank website and observe all outpoints. Write down all outpoints discovered.
Check other sites and feedback to gather features most needed from a content management system.
Compile all items into the list.
Work through the list. Weed out those that can wait until the next release.
Post the list into the project management system (Flyspray).
Notify developers of the list and proceed to next step of the plan.

Battle Plans

A battle plan is your list of upcoming targets for the upcoming day or week. Too often, people make battle plans without having performed the first two steps in planning (strategic and tactical). As a result, the list turns into a list of things they HOPE to get done that day or week. The items on the list have no real direction - they are just there and they get forwarded constantly until you finally get them done or delete them from the list. This is better than nothing and at least it gives your time SOME direction. But, the ideal use of the battle plan is that the items on that list come directly out of your tactical planning. The targets on your list need to be precise and doable. It needs to be an item phrased in such a way that you KNOW when it is done. Putting an item like “Spend time on blah” or “Be better at my job” are not precise and doable, meaning there is no precise point where you KNOW you have accomplished your task. On the other hand, an item like “Design new website header” or “Post entry to the blog” is doable. You know when it done and you can then check it off your list.

Another thing to consider here is the scope of your targets. If I tried to put a target on my list such as “Finish Miraserver 2.0″, then that target will not get done and will just forward on and on. It is not precise and doable. It is too big. One of the quickest ways to get apathetic about your to-do list is not seeing items getting checked off and DONE. So, if any item on your list is too comprehensive, break it up into a series of even smaller steps and then put THIS on your battle plan. You want to actually get things done and check things off your list. Don’t make your targets trivial just for the sake of being able to check something off. But at the same time, make them such that you can get them done in a finite amount of time and check them off that day.

Alignment

When you approach your time in this manner, you will get things done. The trick is to perform all steps:

Outline your purpose
Develop your strategic plan to achieve that purpose
Developer your tactical plans to get the steps of your strategic plan to a done.
Each day, develop your battle plan using targets from your tactical planning.

In this way, all of your actions align to achieve your goal. Without some kind of guidance in this regard, you can spend time spinning your wheels, being very busy without getting any real progress made.

You can have more than one purpose ongoing at any time. You can approach them all the same way and then work steps of your various tactical plans into your common day’s battle plan.

On a last note, I want to mention the importance of statistics. You want to find some way to measure your progress and benchmark your activity. If your purpose has something to do with something numerical (such as increasing site traffic or increasing income), then you can track these figures and know if you are progressing. Sometimes, you need to come up with arbitrary statistics. In my business, I have a number of stats which are not arbitrary. However, I developed a point system to track my own personal efficiency. I take all of the various actions I perform and I assign them a relative point value (considering the time it takes to do and the importance of that action to my business). i work it up and down until the point system seems balanced. Then each day, I track my activity. When I send off an email, I give myself 2 points. When I prepare a newsletter, I get 80. Each day I get a total point value which I can then compare and thus track how much work I got done that day. It is arbitrary, but it is something to go by so I can measure how I’m doing.

Conclusion

Hopefully this short synopsis can help you manage your time a little better. While I tended to tailor it mainly to webmasters, this same methodology can be used for the accomplishment of any goal. Give it a try.

Advice