Remarkably Enough
I would say that the last few months of my job, from a developmental perspective, have almost entirely been about time management. Which is weird, since I’ve never thought myself at all challenged in that area. But, the professional world is very different.
Especially in a job like mine, you pretty much have people heaving things at you from many different directions. And, if you apply your own value system to some of the tasks, they would never get done. That’s the sticking point: when do you put down what you know is more important because you have become delinquent or slow on something less important? How to manage that?
It’s especially challenging when you receive a request you simply don’t know how to handle immediately and know you’re going to have to tap other resources. My biggest challenge has been to find a way to track and manage tasks that go from “Pending” to “In Action”, then immediately begin cycling around “Waiting for Third-Party”, “Pending”, and “In Action”.
Anyway, the experiences have been of great help. I’m very much a fan of the Inbox Zero concept, and I’ve basically structured my entire workflow around keeping things out of my Inbox. Although I’m not so against having a constant poll on your mailbox (not like our system lets you avoid that anyway).