The Fastest Way To Accomplish All Your Tasks
What’s the secret to finishing everything you’d want to do?
Delete most of your tasks.
2 Minute Action:
Run though your to do list.Everything on that list should be fighting for its life to stay on the list.If you can’t live without it, keep it.If the show will go on, try pushing it back.Its up to you how you spend your time on this planet.
Why You Don’t Want To Do What You Don’t Want To Do
What can I do for you?Why is that helpful?And why is that?Hmm, so why does that end up being a benefit?When we’re working with a team or with clients, one of the most powerful ways to create a valuable solution is to dive deep into the nuts and bolts of the problem.The saying is “5 Why’s.”It takes asking “Why” 5 times before you get to the root of the problem.And let me stop you right now from thinking that this is just some silly platitude or truism.The biggest benefit of diving deep is that by solving the root problem, you prevent future problems from popping up.In fact, fixing bugs as soon as they pop up in software can prevent extra work later on—the book “Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time” mentions that problem solving can be 3-5 times more work if the problem waits a few weeks.Moral of the story?Dive deep. Dive immediately.
2 Minute Action:
What’s the thing you DON’T want to do today?Why not?Why’s that?So, why?Okay, but why?And why do you think that is?Alright, so what are you going to do about it?
How To See Into The Future And Reduce Work Waste
New York City has 3 days of food supplied.Outside of that, there's little food storage in the Big Apple.Toyota, Dell, and McDonald's use a similar system to get their products to consumers.This is called Just In Time inventory and it's saving a lot of time, dollars, and headache.The caveat is that you do have to know a bit about the demands that may or may not hit--but it's a very effective way to reduce waste.So New York City has enough "user data" to know that 3 days supply of food is a pretty good operating budget. It knows that it can ship food just as it's consumed and if they have 3 days of food in storage, they can also accommodate the fluctuations of the market demand.So what does this mean for your task load?
2 Minute Action
You probably need to know a little bit about what tasks are pending or incoming--but you probably don't need to see as far as you think into the future.The more you can honor a culture of "adapting to reality" instead of "sticking to the plan," the more likely you'll be resilient in uncertain environments.Of course, if you're working on a fixed scope project, this isn't as useful, but it does help protect against unforeseen events or abrupt crises.Take 2 minutes right now to plan out your 3 day supply of food for your team.The point isn't to get it perfect, it's just to get started. You don't need more than 2 minutes to get a rough draft.