(The following is an excerpt from the book, Hacking Normal by John Stevenot available on Amazon.com)
What good are trade-offs if we don’t have a systematic process to help us evaluate them?
Not very good at all.
Thus, we move to the next topic that is key to helping us make the best use of our time, task management.
There are multiple ways in which we can begin to make better choices about the tasks that confront us each day. One of my favorite techniques of all is “task-recycling”.
Task-recycling is accomplished through a series of five steps.
Step 1. Delete
Step 2. Automate
Step 3. Hand Off
Step 4. Recycle (…and return Task to Step 1)
Step 5. Tackle
What I love about task-recycling is that it gives you permission, as well as a process, to take a step back from any choice that is laid out in front of you. I am a firm believer that choices need to be evaluated in the right light with the appropriate amount of time.
If anyone tries to force you to decide without first weighing the consequences of what your decision could mean, they are trying to scam you. Let’s break down the steps to see how they can help.
Step 1. Delete
The French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Simply addition by subtraction.
The perfect house is clean, tidy, and clutter-less. So, why do we have a different line of thinking when it comes to work?
It seems to me that many people try to fill their day with things that don’t help them do their jobs. As assignments and inquiries cross our desks, we need to begin to evaluate them through the first lens of the task-recycling process: Delete.
Deleting certain tasks is by far the most effective way to multiply your time. These are things that, if we stopped doing, would cause no disruption in the flow of the workday.
Many of the tasks that come across your desk are trivial. Yet, many of us do them because they seem like good business practices.
Here are a few examples:
1. Reconsidering a decision: Also known as second-guessing yourself or getting someone else’s opinion. Not only are you wasting your time, but you are wasting someone else’s time in order to affirm a decision you have made.
Be confident in your choice and move forward. There is no need to stop and reevaluate, unless new information comes to the forefront. Eliminating this saved me around two hours a week.
2. Needless meetings: Are you having meetings because “it’s what we do on Thursday” or because there is a real reason to bring everyone together? If it is a real reason, good, have the meeting. Make sure there is an agenda, a team leader, and a specific end time to ensure that the meeting doesn’t stray off course. If you are having the meeting because you’ve always had the meeting, get rid of it. Doing this alone saved me around four hours a week.
3. Emails: By far the best way to reach me is by email, but email is also my pet peeve. Many people use email to relay way too much information. An email, in my opinion, never needs to scroll and should be written in the form of bullet points. Now, if the email is going out as a newsletter and needs to be more professional, fine, write a long email. But, when it comes to communication with the team members, email should be short and sweet. Also, I make it my mission to only check email three times a day: once when I start my workday, once after lunch, and once before I cease to be reachable until tomorrow. All other times of the day are meant for intensive work, not email anticipation and response. Putting a stop to constantly checking my email saved me around two hours a week.
4. Doing someone else’s job: I’ll admit it, I’m sort of tough about this. This comes in two parts: first, you are doing another person’s work and, second, other people are getting into your work. Let’s tackle the first one: don’t do someone else’s job. Why? Because, despite what you might think and feel, you’re not being a good Samaritan. You’re enabling bad time and project management skills.
As much as it hurts, sometimes you must let people face their own consequences. This does two things for the person: One, it teaches them to stay on top of their tasks and ask for help when they are confused – rather than when they are drowning, and two, it shows the manager of that person how much work the employee can or cannot handle.
Just like you shouldn’t do another person’s job, don’t let other people do your job. Have you ever heard the phrase, too many cooks in the kitchen? If so, you probably understand that it means that when too many people give their input on a subject (a recipe for cooks), the result tends to be inferior.
If you’ve been hired for a job, do the job, then ask for feedback. Don’t let others intrude or give you feedback while you are working, unless you specifically ask for it.
Start with “No”
The first step to begin eliminating things from your work docket is to start saying “No”. I’ll admit, I went a little crazy with this initially. I was saying no to everything.
It felt good.
Eventually, though, I was able to calculate the trade-offs of what saying “yes” to this and no to that would be. I first had to establish a hard boundary. Others had to realize that not every request they presented was going to get my attention.
I was especially strict on things that were deemed as “emergencies.” In my opinion, nothing is an emergency. What the person is really saying when they are claiming an emergency is, “Help! I didn’t plan my time or tasks appropriately. Save me!”
An emergency is just a way for someone to ask you to do his or her work (and we are eliminating that from our diet). I have a distinct memory of a coworker melting down during a phone call (this was before I stopped taking calls) about how a sales representative needed a video shot, edited, rendered, and delivered to her booth at a conference in Germany for a product that was shipping out of our warehouse by the end of the business day to a customer in Alabama.
In her words, this was an emergency and we needed to act now. Mind you, it was 2:30 P.M. when I got this call, and I worked remotely (which we will talk about in the post about controlling your location). To produce this video was, to put it lightly, impossible in the time frame we had available.
The time it would take to take the product off the truck, set up the machine, operate, shoot (including editing, voice-overs, and final rendering), and reload (back onto the truck), far exceeded the two and a half hours we had available to us.
Instead of stressing myself out and rushing over to miss the deadline and put even more people behind, I evaluated the trade-offs and chose to say no to my frantic coworker. I suggested that we pull an image from our database of machines in a laboratory setting to be sent to the people in Germany. From Germany, they could get it blown up and printed for the conference floor.
I created an online form for the salespeople that could capture the contact information of interested prospects that integrated with our marketing automation and CRM systems.
I told the sales people to inform any prospect that a video was being created to fully explain the ins and outs of the machine, but, since it was such a “new” product of ours, we were a little behind on our promotional material (putting the blame on me).
Everyone calmed down.
The “emergency” was solved because I practiced the art of saying no.
Step 2. Automate
“If it’s not a process, it’s a problem.” – Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle
Whenever I get the opportunity to corner someone and talk about my new, hacked way of working, I get a little overzealous when the topic of automation comes up.
I love the idea that everything can be systematized or automated.
Automation, to me, is an investment in your future. From the menial to the complex, automation can change your world for the better. You just need a little imagination.
For any project, one of the first questions I ask is, “Can this be systematized with automation?” My goal is to work smarter, not harder. Any time spent automating a daily task today pays you back with exponentially more in the future. Your upfront investment of even a small amount of time could equal out to days or weeks of saved time in the future.
The Beauty in Systems
Automation is beautiful because it removes the task from your mind, but still it gets done. One of my favorite automated systems is one I set up for a small insurance firm.
As a company, their biggest lead generation tool is cold calling businesses. Any time a lead says they are interested in learning about insurance rates, the caller marks appropriate fields within their customer relationship management tool.
Depending on what they select, different things happen.
If a lead is marked as interested, a series of follow-up emails are sent out to nurture the lead on the service capabilities, history of the company, and other supplemental items.
At the same time, the lead is assigned to an individual in the service department. The person is given a task to gather the census data from the company and compile a list of proposals.
When the proposals are added to the CRM, the CRM picks up the proposals, inserts them into an email, and sends the email to the lead. A few follow-up emails are sent to confirm that the lead has received the information and whether they would like to move forward.
Maybe it’s hard to see as described here in words, but it’s magic in action.
Where there used to be the need for lots of hand-holding and worker interaction, there is now a system that works 24/7.
It’s beautiful.
When it comes to work, it’s worth taking time to see what can and can’t be automated within your daily tasks. Automation doesn’t have to be solely limited to major tasks. Frequently, it is automating the small stuff that makes the most immediate difference.
Step 3. Hand Off
Out of all the steps in task-recycling, this one is probably the hardest. It’s not a problem of knowing what it means to rely on other people, it’s a problem of trust.
Handing off a task means that you are giving something that you are responsible for to someone else.
Sometimes, the person you hand it over to may not complete the task to your standards. That’s just reality. Sometimes, if you want a job done right, you must do it yourself. But, doing everything yourself is becoming increasingly impossible.
Find Someone Better
Tim Ferriss, in his book The Four-Hour Workweek, loves the idea of outsourcing aspects of your job with or without permission from superiors. He talks about how it is possible to leverage outsourcing so that you are making money in US dollars, but getting work done for Rupees.
It’s a fascinating subject, but one that many of us will have a difficult time implementing.
While it is unfortunate, there is still a technology and language barrier that is going to impede most from being able to effectively hire virtual assistants.
For me, the matter is purely economic. I don’t have the funds to A/B test different virtual assistants to do my job for me. Plus, with my systems of automation, in the time that it would take for me to explain to someone in India how to do a job and wait for their response, I could have done the task 10 times.
So, yes, it is true that for pennies on the dollar, you can get unbelievably quick and accurate work done for you by someone on the other side of the planet. You’ll just have to weigh the trade-offs to see if it is right for you. In the meantime, use the resources around you to leverage tasks to others.
How I Made It Work for Me
I was born with a defect. This defect is an affliction that impacts around 8 percent of men and 0.5 percent of women around the world. It’s misunderstood by many and causes those who have it great frustration in many aspects of their lives. The most common form of this malady is called deuteranomaly.
Never heard of it?
That’s okay. It’s better known as colorblindness, more specifically, red-green colorblindness. Being colorblind is a big deal for me because, as a digital content manager, I deal with color daily.
Whether it is balancing color in a photo, color coordinating the brand colors across multiple online platforms, or designing an info-graphic for a product, if I get a hold of it without a little supervision … look out. The final product is going to be strange.
So, in order to prevent any major moments of disaster, I outsource design tasks to one of two places. The first option is my brother. He’s a talented artist. He wants to go to school to become a concept artist. So, to help him hone his craft and make a little money on the side, I throw him some design projects. The kid is good, fast, and responsive to criticism and vague direction.
The second option is outsourcing to a company such as Fiverr. On that site, I can put up an idea and designers around the world bid on the project. No matter which option I go with, I’m always happy with the result. Anything is better than the mess I would make.
Steps 4 & 5: Tackle or Recycle?
We’ve come to the last two steps of task-recycling. If the task in front of us cannot be deleted, automated, or handed off, we are at a fork in the road.
On the one hand, we have the choice of directing our full attention to the task and completing it. On the other hand, we have the choice of putting the task back into the hopper to be “recycled” and run through the process again.
Step 4: Recycle
If there is no immediate need for the task to be completed, you are free to put it off. Once the task is returned to the front of the process, it will go through the steps again, but later.
Like most things in life, there is a time and a place for everything. If the time and place is not now, why stress yourself out or take your eye off the things that need your immediate attention?
Step 5: Tackle
The piece of work must be done. It can’t wait. If all avenues of alleviating yourself of this item have been exhausted, there is nothing left but to complete it.
Don’t take this as a negative, though. This, usually, means that it is something you need to work on. It is likely that this is an item of high importance.
This is great news!
You are finally working on something that really needs you to accomplish it.
The idea of putting some things off has a terrible stigma. It’s often paralleled with laziness, unproductive behavior, and ineffectiveness. No one wants those labels associated with their work ethic (at least, I would hope not).
What is important to remember is that applying task-recycling is not a tool for the lazy. In fact, this is a tool meant for those who want to be “hyperefficacious”.
Task-recycling is here to help you work on the things that will make the biggest difference in the short and long term. If you were looking for a way to put off work and watch cat videos on YouTube all day, this is not a tool for you.