I still can't quite understand why it is that the short weeks seem to be so frenzied. It's like payback for the extra holiday day of a long weekend. It's gotten to the point where by Monday evening I'm just dreading what's to come in the rest of the week ahead. Of course, last week was no exception. Two trips to Fredericton (Wed & Thurs) for meetings kind of shortens the week even further, add the first week of classes to the mix and it was just insane. On the positive side, on Friday I managed to get a huge chunk of work done on a website enhancement request (which actually ended up being more than 5 hours of work and I'm anticipating at least another couple of hours before it's completed). But I'm still left with some major projects plus another new site redesign which needs to be completed by mid-November at the latest. I'm pretty backed up right now and with one coworker on vacation and the other on extended leave - well lets just say it's a tad busy 'round here.

So how does one handle this kind of workload? Well, in terms of priorities I work it out in a complex bit of triage. Our usual procedure is enterprise projects, then campus wide, faculties and departments, plus I add in to the mix the hard deadlines vs softer ones. Right now I'm focused on trying to clear off my project list as best I can so the ones on my list that are quick hits and have been waiting for a while might get bumped ahead of more complex projects that are currently being worked on. Or, as in the case of the project last week, a hard deadline forces my hand and moves the project to the head of the line. It's a constant juggling act and while it's not perfect it seems to be working (at least I've heard no complaints so far).

Well, we'll see how next week shapes up. Hopefully, some of the first week confusion will have been resolved and hopefully I'll be spending less time on the phone fielding assistance calls and more time working on projects.