Serial Entrepreneur and Document Tools

[Anonymous]

Folks,

I am a new member here and wanted to introduce myself by ways of offering a suggestion to some of you that might help you in allocating time appropriately to certain tasks as well as monitoring how much time you spend on them.

First a short background on me. I am a serial entrepreneur, having started my first company when I was 17 and sold it when I was 20 to a public company in British Colombia. When I was 27, I sold my second successful venture to a public company in New Zealand. Now, I work in the defense/intelligence space and run a private military intelligence company.

For many years now, I have relied on a series of document tools to help me keep organized during my day. It’s called the Printable CEO series developed by David Seah. One of the key ingredients to this series is the Emergent Daily Task sheet. This sheet allows you to not only allocate time to individual tasks throughout the day, but it also allows you to identify how much time you’re actually spending on things you shouldn’t.

I hope to meet a lot of you soon and do look forward to learning whatever I can from this forum, the site, and it’s people.

Alissa Knight

http://about.me/alissaknight

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[Anonymous]

Hi Alissa,

Thanks for posting this. I printed off the task timer and the task planner, and I’m going to try them out this week. I just spent a week trying to eliminate or postpone some of the distractions that keep me from getting my day started, and that was useful. Now I can see the sense in interrupting my day every 15 minutes to see what I was actually doing at work (or home).

I once told my therapist that I had a never-ending list of things to do. He said “that’s too many, take some things off the list”. I just couldn’t do it. I think he told me to try to put only 6 things on the list, that this was more than enough, and then to do only 4 of them. So timing what I do (to see where the energy goes) and then focusing on just three tasks per day and mapping out when I’ll do them is a great idea. I’ll give it a try!

I am great at planning, but awful at executing a plan. If I can see what I’m up to during the day, maybe that awareness will help me focus more on what I plan to do, or at least recognize when I’m going off the rails.

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[Anonymous]

Alyssa,

Thanks for sharing. Like no-dope, I’ll be trying the ETP.

You consult on counterinsurgency for DoD? That has got to be the coolest job ever.

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[memzak]

Welcome Alyssa!

I have been looking at the tools you mentioned and I think I am going to find them very useful. Thank you for the tip. I had downloaded another task manager last week and was struggling with how it works its so complicated. I quite often find myself side tracked because of life events and with this I can keep track of whats happening with life in case I need to remember what happened when.

When did you find out you are ADD? Your energy and organization remind me of a former boss who is the extremely hyperactive type and has your kind of drive and determination. He is on his way to making a million dollars a year in the company he works for.

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[Anonymous]

Ok, today I started with the task timer tool, and already I have spent more of my day surfing the internet! Time to get my butt in gear and get off the computer!

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[Anonymous]

I love David Seah website. They regift receipt is funny.

knockknock.biz is also very helpful. My wife got me their All Out Of list for grocery shopping at the Container Store. Sorry, that’s confusing: At the Container Store, my wife bought me their All Out of list so that I could use it to go food shopping.

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[Anonymous]

I haven’t seen his regift receipt – will have to look for it.

I didn’t dare look at knockknock.biz today (I peeked) as it would have been a monumental timewaster. I do a lot of my own graphic work so I could probably come up with my own forms and lists, but that would also be a monumental timewaster – sometimes it’s better to pay someone for their work rather than DIY.

I used the task timer today, it was very useful, and I am pleased with what I got done. But I learned that I shouldn’t leave the timer and the task form next to the computer as it’s too tempting to press the timer for the next 15 minute session and then sneak on the computer for “just a few minutes” – we all know where that sneaky little thought leads 🙄

The 15 minute timer was a bit annoying at times when I wanted to keep working, but the combination of reporting form and physical timer helped motivate me to use my time on my priority tasks rather than the usual goofing off until I feel like doing a task (and then goofing off again when I’m bored with the task).

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[Anonymous]

Ok, an update here, it’s a repeat of something I posted on the high five thread.

I was getting good at doing things I didn’t want to report on at the beginning of the 15 minute timer, after all, the idea is when the timer goes off, mark a bubble next to what you were doing. So I had found a way to circumvent the process.

But it’s still helping a lot, and I now have a few days data showing what I did. That will go a long way towards starting to actually plan a day where I know what I did, how long it took, and how much time I need to carve out for certain things.

I’m in the type of business that is not the same from day to day (suits me fine as an ADDer), so planning is challenging at the best of times, but this has been really helpful at keeping me from doing the distracting stuff that usually derails my day or gets it started incredibly late.

Had an equipment failure this morning, so my day is already derailed, but have lunched and am ready to go back – I’ll work late tonight to make up for it. And I vow – no more peeking at the internet every time I reset the 15 minute timer!

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[Anonymous]

Yikes! I completely forgot about this thread I started here until I was reminded of it from my about.me page hits Thank you to all for the warm compliments and I am very pleased that the EDT is helping some of you.

Good luck to all of you and I look forward to learning just as much as I contribute here.

VR,

Alissa Knight

http://about.me/alissaknight

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