I've found a way to partially counteract a manager's meeting schedule: splinter my work into extremely small pieces, and write them down in a TODO list. These tasks must have a clear DONE/NOT DONE boundary, and shouldn't need to be revisited. You should also break it up so that every time you finish something, you should be able to check something off of your TODO list. If it's not already there, add it, and then check it off.

For instance, if I had to write code to read data from a GPS unit, I might break it up like this:

* Find data spec on new GPS unit. * Look up current GPS interface.. if none, write an example and design an API around the example. * Write out header file (We use C++... that's another story :D) * Write function 1. ... * Write function n. * Procure GPS unit. * Debug.

I always feel some personal inertia against doing a task like "Write class to load data from the new GPS unit", but it's pretty hard to look at each subtask and say "err, I guess I should organize my inbox." Which I would probably do otherwise.

I have trouble finding tasks that are indivisible, but they exist! Designing and implementing custom data structures is one that I've run into recently... it has an ambiguous up-front design cost that makes it hard to divvy-up work.