How does the 3-bin method for project management work?

Question

Business Informatics

Hello.
There was a question about the organization of working and personal time, as well as working main and indirect projects.
Now on the shoulders of 1 main project, 2 indirect and 1 in the testing stage. During a break in the working day, I can get distracted and work on the object under test and forget about the tasks of the main one - after finishing with the test, people with questions of indirect projects can be distracted. At the same time, the main thing stagnates, things accumulate and you yourself understand. In the future, I am going to and want to take on more projects, but I can’t and won’t until I educate myself.
My question is this - how to discipline yourself, organize, properly divide yourself in order to eliminate the possibility of stagnation in projects as much as possible? I know, there are a lot of various and diverse articles, but I have not read a single one with real examples.
PS One wise uncle advised to use the "3 baskets" method. The essence of the method is to break the cases into "very urgent", "urgent, but there is not enough information" and "finished". I sent it to the network for details, but I did not find normal information, so if anyone knows, uses or can explain in more detail, please help.

Answer 1

I would use a matrix of 4 options - important urgent, important non-urgent, unimportant urgent, unimportant non-urgent. And proceeding from it, to divide all things first to do important things then unimportant ones, people will have to be sent off sometimes. Break everything down into iterations - I tested a part, I can answer people's questions while I'm testing - no questions and communication.
Planning for to reduce switching, like tomorrow I only have the main project doing nothing else.

Answer 2

PS One wise uncle advised to use the "3 baskets" method. The essence of the method is to break the cases into "very urgent", "urgent, but there is not enough information" and "finished". I sent it to the network for details, but I did not find normal information, so if anyone knows, uses or can explain in more detail, please help.

For this technique, the Trello project management service is very well suited . He, just, suggests dividing your tasks into groups and moving them among themselves as they change.
¡Saludos!

Answer 3

I remember that even Joel Spolsky spoke about the dangers of multitasking in relation to people . This is just your case. Don't switch to a less important task until you've completed a more important one. There are no exceptions.
If you, like me, work on several projects at the same time, then you have a common set of tasks with prioritized goals. You only work on the task with the highest priority, the rest are in the queue. If there are several such tasks, drag managers to you and force them to clarify priorities.
What about consulting on side projects? - Give them the appropriate priority and assign a specific time outside of which calls are ignored.
What about requests to fix critical bugs? - Tell all users that their applications have been accepted and work is underway, then prioritize and consistently fix all bugs.

Answer 4

You do not have the usual discipline, without cultivating the discipline of doing the main work, you will always have such a problem.

Answer 5

Ohoho. And no one talks about GTD !
Ruslan , you should not give yourself a bream and generally blame yourself for all sins. Millions of knowledge workers around the world face the same problems. It is solved through the introduction of the correct work methodology (read David Allen's book, link to Google above) + the introduction of the right habits (you can read Leo Babouta on the topic) + yes, yes, some discipline.
Start following the method and you will immediately feel relief! Checked!
Now for practice. To maintain a to-do list for projects and the list of projects itself (in fact, you have more of them than you wrote), you can use the Workflowy service or build a more complex system in Podio. You can read about the implementation of the GTD methodology in podio on my blog soon - subscribe to the newsletter. Link in profile.
Hope it was helpful.
— Stas.