PragmaGraphic

I have read and re-read an article on Blue Flavor’s great blog entitled “Putting Out Fires” several times now. Brian Fling explains that “unforeseen projects or tasks that tend to come from nowhere,” or “fires” “are an inevitable part of the modern workplace.” Like me, I’m sure many of you know exactly what Brian means. As of this writing, I lead a small group in a company of about 60 people, in a culture that is centered around these fires, in which every project, every conversation, every initiative seems to be an emergency. And I freely admit that I am not only a victim of fire-starting, but am often the firestarter myself.

Brian offers some good advice here on not only how to put fires out, but how to prevent them in the first place. Brian mentions that he “once had a job where [he] received so many email requests for new work on a daily basis that it was impossible for [him] to respond and schedule next steps for all of them.” This sounds a lot like my work life right now. I use a neo-GTD system that’s centered around creating and maintaining momentum by identifying and acting on “the next action,” and while this has helped me get a lot of things done, I have not been able to work the system to deal with a workload that has many tight deadlines, and constant new emergencies cropping up all the time.

In any case, I really like the way Brian has classified the different kind of fires here, I think this is going to be a thing.