How to Make Your Work More Efficient

This week we’re exploring the need for projects and why the way a project has been defined is causing most of your task management problems. 

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Episode 272 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 272 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

How many projects do you have? 50? 75? More than a hundred? Well, if you are defining a project as “anything you want to do that requires more than one action step”, as many people do, you are going to have a lot of projects. And all those projects need looking at to decide what needs to happen next. 

When I was researching the reasons why so many people resist doing a weekly planning session, one thing I kept coming up against was the large number of “projects” people told me they had to review, which made doing a weekly review or planning session too long. 

I began to realise that if our resistance was down to the sheer number of projects we had to review each week, that was something fixable because we have control over the number of projects we have. More interestingly, we also have control over how we define what a project is. 

If we change the way we define a project to something that fits better with the work we do, we can reduce the number of projects we have and that in turn will reduce the time it takes to complete a planning session. 

So, before we dive a little deeper into this, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Christian. Christian asks: Hi Carl, I’ve always struggled with managing my projects. When I look at my task Manager, I have over 80 projects. These take a very long time to go through each week and I hate doing it. (Which is why I don’t do a weekly planning session) My question is; is it normal to have so many projects?

Hi Christian, thank you for your question.

I’ve found those who have read and tried to implement David Allen’s Getting Things Done, do tend to have a lot of projects. This is a consequence of how David Allen defines a project. That being anything that requires two or more steps. 

This means, in theory, making an appointment to see your dentist, take your car in for a service or arranging your annual medical check up will all be projects. Yet, if you stop and think about this, if you dedicated thirty minutes on a given day, you could easily make all these arrangements. They certainly don’t need to be projects. 

Over my working life, I’ve worked in a number of different industries. From hotel management, to car sales, law and teaching. When I look back over these jobs, I cannot remember treating everything as a project. I came into work, and got on with the work. 

For instance, when I was working in a law office, we had around 150 cases ongoing at any one time. We never treated these cases as projects. They were our work. And our work had a process. When a new case came in, we needed to collect information and there was a checklist on the inside of the case file that we checked off as the information came in. The first step, once the new case was entered into the firms computer system was to request the information we needed. 

Each day, we were receiving information for many of these cases and we simply printed off the file or, if it came in my regular mail, check the information, put the documents in the case file and checked off the information that had come on the checklist. 

It was a part of my core work to ensure that the cases due to be completed that month, were monitored and any reasons why a case might not complete on time, were communicated to the client. To manage this, we had a spreadsheet, which either myself or my colleague updated every Friday afternoon and sent it to our client. 

I remember when I worked for a famous marketing company here in Korea, the copy writers and designers never considered individual campaigns as a project. It was just a part of their daily work. They would come into work, make coffee and then get on with the work they were currently working on. It was almost like a conveyor belt. Once the current piece of work was completed, it was handed on to the next person in the chain and they did their bit. 

It seems to me, that perhaps what we are doing is confusing our core work with project work. 

So, what is a project? For me a project is something unique that has a clearly defined deadline that is going to take a reasonably long time to complete. For example, moving house, would be a project. There are a lot of interconnected things here. Putting your current house on the market, finding a new home and arranging for furniture to be moved. 

Moving house is not going to to happen over a weekend and will only happen if you have a plan to make it happen. 

Theoretically, producing this podcast would be a project. There are multiple steps from deciding which question to answer, to writing the script, organising the Mystery Podcast voice to record the question and recording and editing the audio track. But it’s not a project. It just a part of my core work.

I produce a podcast every week so I have a process for doing it. I also consider producing this podcast as part of my core work, which means I have a process for doing it. 

Each week, I write the script on Tuesday, I send the question to the Mystery Podcast Voice on Thursday and record the podcast on Friday during my audio visual time block on a Friday morning. 

I don’t need project folders, I don’t have anything to review. It’s just a part of my work that I do every week. The only thing I have is a list in my notes app of all the questions I have collected and on a Tuesday morning I will pick a question to answer. 

So, Christian, what I would suggest is first look at the work you do and identify your core work—the work you are employed to do. What are you responsible for? What results does the company you work for expect of you? That will give you a clear set of activities to perform each week and month. Once you know what these are, you can distribute those activities throughout the week to ensure they get done. 

For example, if I take working for the law firm as an example. Each morning we would receive around five to ten new cases. The first job with any new case was to get the case into the firm’s system. So, I would have a daily recurring task on my task list that says “Input new cases into the case management system”. 

Every Friday, I would have a task that says: “Update case spreadsheet and send to client”. That task may mean I need two hours to collect the information, which likely means I need to block two hours out on my calendar every Friday to do the work. 

If I were to treat each new case as a project, it would be overwhelming trying to keep everything up to date. But my core work was not to micromanage individual cases, it was to ensure that all cases were up to date and in the system and to report updates to the client each week. That’s not a project, that’s a process. 

For many of you listening, your company will have some form of work management system. That could be a CRM system if you work in a sales related job, or it could be a central file folder where the work you do on a daily basis can be shared with your colleagues—as there was for the designers and copywriters in the marketing company. 

One of my clients is a screenwriter and while he will have two to four scripts to work on at any one time, and theoretically each script could be considered a project, each day, his focus is on writing. When he does his weekly planning, he will identify the most important scripts and decide which ones to work on the following week. This will be determined by script deadlines.

Then, on Monday morning, he will open his script writing software, sit down and write. His core work is to write scripts, deal with any re-writes the producer requests and meet his deadlines. The only way that will happen is if, when he begins his day he focuses his attention on writing scripts. 

I’ve never heard my client talk about projects. He knows his core work. He knows what his responsibilities as a script writer are and he’s developed a process for getting his work done. All he needs to do is follow that process. 

Another way to look at this would be if Toyota decided to create a new car. If, to build this new car, they have to build a factory then building a factory is a project. It’s a one off unique task with a deadline. Making the cars, that’s a process. If Toyota treated each new car as a project, it would be the most inefficient way to make a car. Instead, they follow a process. That way they can monitor productivity, costs and resources. 

Last week, I answered a question about analogue v digital systems. I was lucky, I began my working life when the world of work was transitioning from a paper based one to a digital one. One of the advantages of the paper-based world was we could put the work we need to do into a physical in-tray. We would then begin at the top and work our way through the in-tray. As we completed work, we move it to an out-tray. At the end of the day we would then transfer what was in our out-tray to the filing cabinet and close out our day. 

Being able to see our work in a physical form meant we could instantly see how much work we had to do. The digital world hides our work, we have emails with documents attached to them hidden inside Outlook. Presentations, spreadsheets and reports are hidden inside folders deep within our computers. We cannot see the work we need to do. 

However, if you build processes for doing you work rather than creating projects, you are going to find life a lot easier. Following processes ensure you get your important work done. The work you are responsible for. Hiding everything inside self-contained projects not only risks things being missed, it also wastes time when have to go looking for things you think you may have missed. 

So, Christian, rather than turning every multi-step task into a project, look for the processes. And if there are no processes for doing your work, create some. It’s how surgeons and pilots do their work every day. They follow processes. It’s how Formula 1 racing teams can move a whole team and two cars from one country to another week after week. It’s not projects, it’s about following a tried and tested process. 

I hope that helps, Christian. Thank you for your question. And thank you for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.