This afternoon I’m at the worst backlog of “things to do” since GTD tracking began in late 2014. I have 333 items in my inbox, on my desk, and in my task list that all demand attention yesterday. What’s astonishing is that “days overdue” is only 8, which means none of these things really originated before the last week. That’s 300 things to do since last week.

I can take a lot of pressure, this is getting near the limit.

A big part of it is the MassLandlords meeting cycle, which holds back a lot of ideas and issues over the summer and then many of our 1,200 members start sending them in. That’s wonderful, but also difficult to manage. I’m lucky we have new part time staff in Springfield to help with some of these requests. But then again, the Springfield group’s dissolving and folding in has taken a lot of my capacity the last two weeks, contributing to the backlog.

The other thing that’s happening is I’ve implemented a really great expediting system, which is a sure sign of flow failure if ever there was one. Expediting certain tasks ahead of older ones in the queue signals my lack of bandwidth. It keeps the fires from raging but it builds up pressure on the overdue items and creates stress. The right way to schedule is to create excess capacity or flex capacity so that things like phone calls don’t send us off on a tangent that we didn’t have time for.

Clearly we need more staff at MassLandlords. I’m working on it. But as I’ve learned over the summer, it can be worse to put the wrong person in the job than to have no one at all. The wrong person can cause more harm than good.

My average pace has been 57 hrs/wk. I had a nice relaxing summer, where the average went down to only 37 hrs/wk. In the big scheme of things, I still exercise, and eat right, and sleep adequately. And I’ve put in harder hours in the past. But boy, I really could use another Friday right about now.