Today, at our Pelago offices, our Internet went offline for eleven hours. From 5am this morning until just a few moments ago, we were in the dark, completely cut off from the rest of the digital world. Instead of descending upon the local coffee shop for free wi-fi, we took a step back and re-evaluated our workload for the day.
Our main problem was that we couldn’t get to Intervals, our online project management tool. To remedy this, we had to think outside the coax that carries our digital lifeblood in and out of these four walls. We had to find a way to track our time and manage our tasks without the benefit of an online tool. It was rough, but we pulled it off.
To start with, we had to track all of our time on paper timesheets. We printed out a few of our old paper timesheets (the ones we used to fill out way back in the day), and started filling them out. Easy enough. Now what about our task lists?
Fortunately, our task management tool, Intervals, emails us notifications whenever a task is created or updated. We simply searched through recent emails and found enough to-dos to keep us busy for at least another day or two.
Although it really sucked not being able to get online, the biggest hassle was changing up our workflow to get things done in a manner we weren’t used to. It’s amazing how efficient we can be when all of our systems are online. Sometimes we take our pervasive online project management system for granted. Not today.
