Stretch Assignment #1: Master the To Do List
This week’s Stretch Assignment: start using a to do list daily. If you already use a to do list every day then challenge yourself to use it to record tasks at an even greater level of detail.
Why Keep A “To Do List”
Manually keeping track of your tasks can seem like a real pain. You might be thinking: “It’s enough to just keep up with my daily tasks, do I really need to constantly record them too?” If you want to be a successful engineer you do. Keeping a to do list for this week’s Stretch Assignment should drive home the importance of a good documentation system in any engineering discipline.
As you progress through your engineering career you will be assigned increasingly complicated tasks. Trying to keep track of them all inside your head doesn’t prove your ability, it proves you are unprepared for more responsibility or for something to go wrong. You need to develop and use a system to track your tasks to completion. This will free your brain up from logistics and allow you to accept more challenging work when it comes your way.
A good documentation system clears your head of logistics, allowing you to focus on problem solving.
Even if you are still early in your career and don’t have many tasks, now is the time to develop the habit of documenting them properly. It is not as difficult or tedious as you think.
Some tasks given to engineers are so large or abstract it can be tough to know how to make progress or even how to start. The act of spelling out objectives, smaller tasks, and their dependencies forces you to zoom out. This often leads you to see the task from a new perspective. Recording upcoming tasks can also reveal holes in your process that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
A big picture approach is needed to outline a to do list, which forces you to see your tasks on a bigger scale.
With an established to do list it is always easy to know where to go next. Going off on a tangent caused by an email or a coworker and then picking work back up right where you left off is so much more manageable.
If maintained over the long term, a to do list not only forces you to manage your day to day work flow more effectively but it will serve as an irreplaceable source of information later. Preparing for performance reviews or writing a resume is easier and more genuine when you have a pool of tasks you actually completed in the last year to pull from.
Benefits of a To Do List
- Lets you return to tasks seamlessly
- Allows you to prioritize
- Forces you to see the big picture and spot problems ahead of time
- Provides a resource for performance reviews or resume writing
How to Create and Use an Engineer’s To Do List
So how do you create this magical tool? The specifics like the format and depth of your to do list will depend on your role and your personal preferences. When starting out keep the structure as flexible as possible and go with what works for you.
The key is to return to your to do list every morning, every time you complete a task and every time you get a new task or acquire new information for an existing task. If you interface with a lot of groups this means you should be opening that list very frequently. If you have more of a head-down analyst role it won’t be as often. Keep up this practice and your to do list will naturally morph into the perfect form for you.
The tasks that seem too complicated or abstract to fit into a to do list are the ones that need it the most. Break the objective down into smaller and smaller tasks and don’t stop until you have actionable items you can begin working on. If you find you don’t have enough information about the objective to get that far, the to do list becomes a great starting point to ask for help.
Stick with the to do list practice for long enough and it will become a natural, needed part of your work flow.
Let me know how you use to-do lists as an engineer and check out how I did keeping up a to do list this whole week on Friday’s Stretch Assignment #1 Recap post.
