Structure your work
I mentioned in a previous post that one of my all time favorite quotes is from Martin Luther, “I've got so much work to do today, I'd better spend two hours in prayer instead of one.” I may disagree with him theologically, but he really hit the nail on the head with that one.
In my working life I’ve commonly worked with people that could aptly be described as frantic. My first job was at a coffee shop. On busy days,, the assistant manager would frequently look at me during rushes in bewilderment because I wasn’t panicking. “There’s a line of drinks to be made!” she would shout at me. This was also the case in my last role. I had a vendor that reported to me that would refuse to meet with me for weeks on end. “I don’t have time,” she would say as the deadlines raced towards us, and on occasion past us.
With all that said, structure is always an on-going battle for me. It’s easy to start a new structure, but it just takes one or two speed bumps to throw me off sometimes. When I got my first 9-5, I would use 3×5 sticky notes. This was a giant leap forward for my productivity. I tend to be a person that takes far too many notes. This really helps my memory but can be a chore to dig through, even if you take notes digitally. By distilling out what I need to do in a day with sticky notes I get the best of both worlds.
The problem came when I started working on more than one project at a time. My sticky notes became top priorities. Items soon started to carry from day to day and the system fell apart. I still love sticky notes even with their flaws. I should mention though, if you have waist-high children, you probably want to keep them out of arms reach (this includes when they are on your lap).
The importance of structure is not just looking forwards but also looking backwards. I don’t just want to know what I need to do. I want to see how much I have done. Have I been slacking? Am I crushing it? Is there some task that is devouring me week? My latest strategy is to keep a logbook. I got this from Austin Kleon’s book Steal Like an Artist. Now I have a tidy list day by day of everything I did. Sometimes it pushes me to get more done so I have something to write. Other times I a boost as I get write down just how productive my day was. At some point soon when I stop wearing 20 hats, it will hopefully be helpful with fine tuning my daily rhythms letting me be more productive. But maybe I’m just getting ahead of myself.
Ryan
