Claire, Plantpassion
Making my to-do lists
Some people hate To-Do lists.....
I've been told lots of times that people don't like them because they never get them finished. So I'm going to show you in this lesson how you can make your self more productive by having 2 lists:
The To-Do list, and the
Get-it-Done list.
First, the To-Do list
This is Everything that needs doing - It's usually huge, mine regularly covers 2-3 pages of A4 paper, and I do a new one about 3 times a season. It is scary and it's something I never show my staff, as I want them to see all the steps forward that we are taking each season. I've learned over the years not to worry when I've made it. To start with I used to panic, because it wasn't do-able, but now I know that most things will get done and that those that don't won't affect my profitability.
Mine is made by walking around the field talking into a voice memo app on my phone. I note all the beds that need planting, all the ground areas that need preparing, all the maintenance jobs that need work on, and all the projects that we need to do. Some of them are small jobs, some of them are much larger. I also make a marketing projects list, but for this section, I'll just concentrate on my field planning.
I've attached my New year list, (made just before Christmas) so you can have a look through. I type mine up from the voice memo, but that's because I can type fast, so writing out a list in a notebook is just as good.
You'll note that I've also marked everything 1-4
These relate to the Urgency/ Importance matrix, and sometimes when I'm walking round the field I get excited about doing a project and then when I'm in the office, and I'm really thinking about it, I realise that it's either a 3, that I don't have money to get help with, or definitely a 4 (not going to get done at all).
(Just a note here, as I look through this list again at the end of 2019, almost everything got done. The Brambles by the loo, finally made it to a 2 in the summer when we had an open day, the leaves never got swept, they just blew away like they always do, and the only project we didn’t get completed was the water containers.)
Get-it-Done list
The "Get-it-Done" list, takes a lot more practice than the To-Do list.
When done correctly a Get-it-Done list is a fabulous morale booster, and an amazing tool to really raise your productivity.
I've always been a list maker, I get it from my mother. She was a primary school teacher while I was growing up, and extremely organised. There was always a list of chores on the go, but when it came to Christmas with a house to decorate and clean after the end of school term and before friends and relatives descended on us, that's when her Get-it-Done lists were handed out to my sister and me.
In order to ensure that the house was in tip top order, we were given carefully planned and timed lists. I don't have a copy of one left now, but my memory of them was something like this.
8.15-8.30 Make bed and tidy bedroom, 8.30-9.00 Breakfast and washing up 9.00-9.30 Polish brass jug and watering can 9.30-10.00 Hang out washing 10.00-10.30 Hoover living and dining room 10.30 - 11.00 Hang up Christmas cards 11.00 Elevenses.
There were key things that I learnt from this
They were lots of little jobs
There were always breaks for meals included
The jobs were carefully organised so they could be done in the timescale - But
If you didn't keep concentrating then you didn't finish your jobs in the allotted time, and you wouldn't get to watch TV at 5pm!
Whilst I would get a short and probably quite rude reply from my son if I gave him a job list like this at home for his chores, he knows that if he has to help me at the farm in the holidays we are there until the list is done.
Here's our Get-it-Done list for the day after I made my To-Do list. I was aiming for us to be at the farm for about and hour.
Plant anemones in greenhouse
Mouse traps
Blackboard paint
Pot up Lupins
Uncover Narcissus
Plant Orlaya and cover
Job timings
So how do you know how long each job will take?
It isn't rocket science, you need to time it, but the good news is that with smart phones, we've got a timer with us all the time now.
There are mostly jobs that we do everyday.
Water a greenhouse, pick a 100 stems of flowers, wash 20 buckets, hoe a 10m bed, plant 100 modules out.
For each of these things to be able to make yourself more productive, you need to know how long it usually takes you to complete the job.
I usually time myself for doing something once (when I've already got all the gear together ready to go)
Then I time myself doing the same thing 3 times in a row - (to see whether that speeds things up or not)
Then I time myself getting all the tools together, doing the job and putting them away.
Example - If I hoe a lightly weeded 10 metre bed in dry weather it takes me 4 minutes
If I hoe 3 x 10 metre beds it takes me 14 minutes -( I obviously get tireder and slower as the hoe gets blunter)
If I get together the hoe, my gloves, a tub trug and a bag for weeds, and then hoe a bed, and put everything away again it takes me just under 10 minutes
So for optimum productivity, I need to have my hoeing equipment with me, and do one or two beds whenever I have finished a session of a job nearby.
“Task
Do a job and time it: Did it take less or more time than you thought?”
Smart targets
It's all very well writing your list, but if you targets aren't "SMART" then it will be very difficult for you to know if they are completed.
Smart stands for
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.
Let's look at the Get-It-Done list that my son and I did, and make it smarter.
Plant Anemones in Greenhouse- This didn't actually give me specifics - the whole greenhouse? One bed of the greenhouse? How many Anemones? What stage are they currently at? Still dry corms / chitted / planted? Could I measure it? Would planting one Anemone meet the requirement? Was it several hundred needed? Is it Achievable to plant Anemones? I'd only planned to be up there for one hour! How big was the greenhouse? Was it realistic to plant them? Was the ground frozen? Was the bed empty to receive them? How much time would it take?
So to make this a SMART target, I should have written
Plant one tray of sprouted Anemones in 2 metres square of the left hand Greenhouse bed we removed the Chrysanthemums from last week, and water in, taking less than 15 minutes.
Likewise
Mousetraps -should have become
Dispose of any carcasses of trapped mice that are from traps set in the Polytunnel, Greenhouse and Grotunnel, and reset with peanut butter, (so that the Anemones and Ranunculus are protected), in less than 5 minutes.
Now obviously writing out a huge long description like this for every line on your list is not realistic, and won't make you productive! BUT, knowing how to plan your tasks each day so that they are Smart, rather than woolly and not realistic will make you hugely more productive.
Example - Sow more seeds, - isn't Smart. But sow 4 trays of seeds with enough seeds that will fill 4 x 10 metre July flowering beds - is.
“Activity : Make a To-Do list, split it into the 4 categories of Urgent/ Important. For all the level 1 categories that you’ll be doing first, make a Smart Target list - Share it in the Facebook group with us.”