Much “To-Do” About Nothing

By on January 25, 2012 in CA Technologies on APM

A new Harvard Business Review article says that to-do lists make you less focused and less productive.

If this is true, I’m in big trouble. I love my to-do lists. I start my day identifying the top three things I have to accomplish by close of business and focus my attention on those action items. I even have a to-do list for the weekend (my husband is far less enamored with this list than I am). As an achievement-oriented person, I firmly believe that my to-do lists help me prioritize, focus and get work done.

According to the article, to-do lists have the opposite effect because they are often too long and lack prioritization. As an alternative, the author recommends that you take your to-do list and put it into your calendar, giving you dedicated time to deliver on your key tasks. I often do this when I have a big project that requires a significant amount of my time.

While I’m not ready to give up my to-do lists, I understand the author’s point about prioritization, focus and productivity. With our over-scheduled families, looming deadlines and interruption-prone work environments, how do we prioritize those tasks that are most critical so that we can get more work done and be more productive?

In our personal and professional lives, this can be a major challenge. However, in the Application Performance Management (APM) market, the answer is not only simple, but also packaged nicely in a three-step to-do list:

  1. Focus: Monitor every user transaction (Web and non-Web) in real time and across physical, virtual, mainframe and hybrid-cloud environments to identify, diagnose and resolve problems before they impact your customers and revenue-generating applications;
  2. Map: Link transactions to the dependent infrastructure to gain a 360-view of application health, accelerate problem resolution and boost IT productivity; and
  3. Prioritize: Link transaction performance to business objectives based on the business value of the transaction to assure high-value transactions receive the highest service levels.

Now, I can delete at least one thing from my to-do list today – write a blog. Nailed it!

What’s on your to-do list? Tweet me @mhsargeant.

Viva la APM and Viva la to-do lists!

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Melissa Hamilton Sargeant

About Melissa Hamilton Sargeant

Melissa Hamilton Sargeant has been developing and marketing IT management software products for nearly 20 years. She has worked for CA Technologies for over five years in senior product marketing roles in Application Performance Management, IT Governance and Security. She currently serves as Sr. Director of Product Marketing for the Service Assurance Customer Solutions Unit where she focuses on CA Application Performance Management. Prior to joining CA Technologies, she was Vice President of Marketing for Digitalsmiths and Bluefire Security Technologies. Mrs. Sargeant also has held senior marketing positions at Mercator Software, Guardent, Digex, Landmark Systems Corporation and COMSAT.
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