S5 Managing Breakdowns

1.	Breakdown:	Uh, oh! I’m afraid that I’m not dealing with one project at a time.
	Consequence:	You are setting yourself up for mistakes, errors and omissions.
	Solution:	If you are not dealing with one project at a time you are either multi-tasking or not focusing on the task at hand. Now imagine you are the patient on the operating table and the surgeon is not able to focus because he/she is distracted by actions in their periphery (‘180’) or perhaps that he/she is late for tee time at the country club. Is this too different from you sitting at your desk with a cluttered ‘180’?

2.	Breakdown:	I’m going to be busted for hoarding files.
	Consequence:	Being a bottleneck rather than a conduit of information.
	Solution:	This usually results from either believing that you’re too busy to put these files away OR there is the falsehood that you feel in control. The truth be told, the hoarding of files many times results in sabotage to self and/or others. The insecurity of having to hang on to everything will go away with the growing confidence that you are in a level of REAL control.

3.	Breakdown:	Gads, I’m not keeping up with my reading (electronically-filed or paper-based versions).
	Consequence:	Missing input of information that you deemed was important enough to read and essential to the success of your job.
	Solution:	In the pursuit of wanting to read everything, we miss reading the important. This program is about an easy-to-adjust-to discipline. Let’s say that you arrive at your office each morning about 8:00 A.M. Here is the new habit – Tuesday and Thursday mornings you’re now arriving at 7:15 A.M. (yep, just 45 minutes earlier than normal). Now, as an exception to the rule, on these two mornings leave your Five Morning Tasks until 8:00 A.M. and dig right into your Reading Terminal. I can guarantee that within two weeks (that’s just four sessions) YOU WILL HAVE CAUGHT UP ON ALL OF YOUR READING. NOTE: Following the ‘Table of Contents’ approach taught in this program, you will be immediately identifying the important from the “Gee, one day when I have the time I’d really like to read this” fallacy.

4.	Breakdown:	Tsk, Tsk! I’m not honoring my Turtle through continuous prioritization.
	Consequence:	Lacking the system to know exactly what needs to be worked on and when.
	Solution:	If you are not maintaining the prioritization of your Turtle throughout the day, how do you know what to do next? What is a priority? Where is your control? What is lurking in your tasks that may be more urgent than what you are working on at the moment? If you don’t effectively prioritize (which takes 5 to 10 seconds [literally] to do), you have destroyed the system as well as control and the power of prioritization and true information management.

5.	Breakdown:	Holy cow, I’m not employing Turtle Sheets for verbal requests.
	Consequence:	Reverting to scraps of paper, post-its or, worse yet your memory, thus having the ‘Nightmare of Forgetting’.
	Solution:	YOU: “Hi Bob what do you need? Cool, I’ll get on to that as soon as possible.” The phone rings again and this time it’s Jan with an EMERGENCY-CRISIS at hand.Thirty minutes later, you end that call. You avoided a company meltdown. Now you go about the tasks that you need to work on for today. Whew, great job on your part (or so you think). Two days pass and the phone rings- BOB: “Hey there, may I come down and pick up that report you promised me for today? Remember the one that is due for the Board of Directors meeting this afternoon?” YOU: “What do you mean? What report?” BOB: “The one that you promised me two days ago.” GET THE PICTURE? With information flying at you at light speed (verbal, written, electronic), anything that you choose to try to ‘remember’ means you are leaving it to chance.At the very moment that Bob asks you to complete a task for him pull out a ‘Turtle Sheet’ and write it down. Even if that emergency call comes in, start the Turtle Sheet with enough information so that you can go back and complete it when your emergency is resolved.

6.	Breakdown:	Sob, sob! I’m failing to write ‘Estimated time’; ‘Completion date’; ‘Start date’ on my Turtle items
	Consequence:	No reality on how long this will take; where to place in priority in your Turtle; no way to monitor when to begin.
	Solution:	If you are truly addicted to chaos, then by all means, consider this aspect of the program to be of no value. HOWEVER, should you choose to be a successful member of ‘CA’ (Chaos Anonymous), then listen up – The investment of the time (less than one minute-literally) to determine the ESTIMATED TIME to accomplish this task creates centeredness; the logging of your COMPLETION DATE gives you the clarity of a non-stressful deadline along with a clear vision to begin your commitment to this project; the logging of your START DATE is just the simple math derived from the combination of the ESTIMATED TIME and the COMPLETION DATE. Cool, huh!

7.	Breakdown:	Bad me for not using my Pending Symbols.
	Consequence:	Losing the advantage of immediately identifying the location of the Pending information.
	Solution:	The simple usage of the Pending symbols allows you to retrieve the information INSTANTLY at the time that you are able to work on it. While it takes only seconds to write/type the symbol, you know from your past experience that hunting down the information can accumulate into far more time than that. And that time is called LOST time.

8.	Breakdown:	Jiminy Crickets! I’m not honoring my ‘THA’ (Turtle Holding Area) and not logging ‘THA’ as the location on my Turtle Sheets.
	Consequence:	Filling your Turtle stack with large or bulky information creates a psychologically daunting experience for yourself. A further consequence is not having established a proper physical location for your THA items.
	Solution:	The purpose of your THA is to hold work that you CAN work on (just not as important as the work that you are doing at the moment) and that has with it information that is too large or bulky to fit in your normal work area. Keeping that information in your space does not support the work that you are doing in this program to bring about focus and concentration, along with a ‘Clear 180’.