CHAPTER 7 | ORGANIZING: SETTING UP THE RIGHT BUCKETSIt's practical to have that stack of reading material at hand
and easy to grab on the run when you're on your way to a meeting
that may be late starting, a seminar that may have a
window of time when nothing is going on, or a den-
tist appointment that may keep you waiting to get
your teeth cleaned. Those are all great opportunities
to crank through that kind of reading. People who
don't have their "Read/Review" material organized
can waste a lot of time, since life is full of weird little
windows when it could be processed.
Organizing "Waiting For"
Like reminders of the actions you need to do, reminders of all
the things that you're waiting to get back from or get done by
others have to be sorted and grouped. You won't necessarily be
tracking discrete action steps here, but more often final deliver-
ables or projects that others are responsible for, such as the tickets
you've ordered from the theater, the scanner that's coming for
the office, the OK on the proposal from your client, and so
on. When the next action on something is up to someone else,
you don't need an action reminder, just a trigger about what
you're waiting for from whom. Your role is to review that list as
often as you need to and assess whether you ought to be taking
an action such as checking the status or lighting a fire under the
project.
You'll probably find it works best to keep this "Waiting For"
list close at hand, in the same system as your own "Next Actions"
reminder lists. The responsibility for the next step may bounce
back and forth many times before a project is finished. For exam-
ple, you may need to make a call to a vendor to request a proposal
for a piece of work (on your "Calls" list.) Having made the call,
you then wait for the vendor to get back to you with the proposal
(the proposal goes to your "Waiting For" list). When the propo-
sal comes in, you have to review it (it lands in your "Read/Review"
stack-basket). Once you've gone over it, you send it to your boss
Those who make
the worst use of
their time are the
first to complain of
its shortness.
—-Jean
de