Stop Using The @Waiting For List!
There is a fallacy in productivity circles that suggests you should create a waiting for folder or tag in your productivity system for all the things you are waiting for.
On the surface, this does make quite a lot of sense. After all, we send out many messages asking for information, and perhaps we do need a way of knowing if this information has been supplied.
Let’s dig a little deeper.
Imagine you want to schedule an appointment with a client and so you email them and ask them if they could meet for lunch on Thursday. Once you have sent the email, you may want to keep that email in a designated place to review when you receive a reply.
However, your calendar app can do that work for you. Whether you use Microsoft Outlook, Apple, or Google calendars, if you schedule the appointment through your calendar, your calendar will notify you once the person you are requesting a meeting with responds. And from there, it is easy to review your appointments to see who has accepted or declined by looking at the suggested appointment time.
Using your calendar to manage your appointments removes the need to manage another folder in your email system, keeping your email simpler and more easily managed.
Another area where people feel they need a waiting for folder is in their task manager for the information they request, so they have a way of knowing what has been received and not received.
Here’s where there is a problem.
If you are requesting information, you will likely have a task that says something like:
“Get a copy of the purchase agreement from Stromberg Shipping Line.”
We need first to ask what the objective is here. With a task like this, the aim is to get a copy of the purchase agreement. What needs to happen to complete that task? You need to receive a copy of the purchase agreement.
Sending an email to your contact at Stromberg Shipping Line is not completing the task. The task would need to be “Send email to Naomi and ask for a copy of the purchase agreement”. Once you send the email, you could then check off the task.
Now, I know you could say I am splitting hairs here, but the way to manage these kinds of tasks does impact your system’s overall effectiveness.
Firstly, where’s the trigger for you to complete the task once Naomi — in this example — sends you the purchase agreement? This is only one task, but if you do this with all your requests, you will soon have a long list of things you are waiting for. I know from experience that this list will contain many completed tasks, so the list quickly becomes outdated and overwhelming. That’s a lot of unnecessary organising and reorganising.
Secondly, and more importantly, you are looking at the wrong objective. In this example, the aim is to get a copy of the purchase agreement. It is not to email Naomi. So if you send the email, moving it to another folder is ‘paper shuffling’. You have not completed the task.
What you have done is completed the first step. If you now have to wait for Naomi to send you the purchase agreement, you need to reschedule the task for another day. On that day, if you have not received the agreement, you can then send a chase email or call Naomi.
To become more productive, you need to get clear about your objectives. The example here is about getting the purchase agreement. That is your objective, not emailing Naomi.
Anything on a waiting for list is an incomplete task. You have not got what you requested, and so the task is unfinished. Moving a task to a waiting for list after you sent the request is just shuffling tasks from one list to another. It’s not completing the task. The job is only complete once you receive the information you wanted.
To complete that task, you need to do whatever it takes to get the information you are waiting for. That may mean you pick up the phone and scream and shout at the person not supplying you with the information, or you send a polite but firm email. The objective is to get the information, not necessarily to build friendships or win popularity contests. That would be an entirely different objective.
To reduce your waiting for list you will sometimes need to get harsh and nasty to complete the task. That means you may need to get tough and nasty with your bosses if they do not provide you with the information.
It would help if you looked at these kinds of tasks from a different perspective. When it comes to your annual evaluation and you are given a poor score, it will not sound good if you try to justify yourself by blaming others for not sending you the information you needed to complete your KPIs. You are not being evaluated based on how many emails you send or phone calls you make to complete your tasks; you are being assessed on your results.
Stop seeing waiting for tasks as somehow being different from a regular task. If the original is not complete, then it’s incomplete, and you just have to reschedule whatever it is to another day when you do have the information to complete the task.
Focus on the right outcomes and do whatever you need to do to clear your waiting for lists. There should be almost nothing in there.
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