Managing this constant and mounting demand often involves switching tasks or multi-tasking, and the job never quite feels done.
Forget multi-tasking, and practise estimating how long a task will take you.
The memo continued: "We would like you to lead a small team to fully define this shortfall in tasking capability [and] identify all the necessary changes needed to rectify it".
In December, it emerged that Desmond was once again looking at testing the market for a potential sale of the four titles, tasking his usual City adviser, Barclays, to sound out prospective suitors.
Before tasking is approved, the database entry for that tasking will be reviewed in order to verify that the database entry contains the necessary citations".
As the NSA itself explained in its guidelines submitted to the Fisa court: "Analysts who request tasking will document in the tasking database a citation or citations to the information that led them to reasonably believe that a targeted person is located outside the United States.
The memo was a "prioritisation and tasking initiative" to another senior member of staff, who was being urged to come up with new ideas, fast.
While the review found the initial response in tasking the navy vessel and later escalating the response was "appropriate", it made recommendations relating to inter-agency communication.
He considers his 500-strong company his personal intellectual playground, thinking nothing of tasking researchers with assessing his impact in the field of complexity theory or analysing 20 years' worth of computer keystrokes to boost his efficiency.
After conducting a July 2003 investigation into the pre-war intelligence processes, a former deputy chief of the CIA concluded that such "repetitive tasking" was partly aimed at eliciting the desired response.A more insidious example of the administration's whip-cracking ways was the intelligence-scanning cell established by Douglas Feith, an under-secretary of defence.
In the British context, sending ministers or the prime minister to the House of Commons before European councils would probably turn into a circus.More promising is the idea of tasking members of the British Parliament to track EU legislation from much earlier on, while it is still in the legislative pipeline.
