The Overhead of Overwork

Fibber McGee Kanban

In her post yesterday, Tonianne talked about Limiting Work-in-Progress to help achieve focus. We have to limit our WIP on purpose because we do not limit it naturally. We naturally assume too much work. We naturally overload ourselves.This means we naturally overload others as well.When we visualize our work, we quickly see that there is too much. Strangely enough, this is an issue of volume. It’s like pouring a glass of milk in the dark … you actually need to see your work to control it.This is Fibber McGee. He had a closet. It was filled with stuff. When he opened it, he was buried in stuff.I am Jim Benson, I have a small dead-end hallway in my house that has taken me literally six months to clean.  It was filled with stuff. Why? Because whenever I had stuff that I couldn’t put somewhere, I put it there.Gray Hill Solutions files, receipts, my 14,500 conference tote bags, letters from the 80s, photographs, books, etc. all piled into that closet.It was a bottomless pit, a convenient sinkhole until I needed something. Then it was six months of cleaning.That’s what we do to ourselves and the people who work for us. Because we can’t see our work, it’s like Fibber’s closet or my hallway. We just keep throwing stuff in there and not paying attention to it.In our work, we take on more and more because the task seems small and we don’t understand our actual capacity. We take on more and more because we can’t see we are already overloaded. One day, we burn out, we break down, we snap.What we don’t do is take a vacation.  Why would we … we’re “too busy.”Once we assume too much work, we are stuck in debt hole. We have to pay off the new work, plus the old work we haven’t yet completed … with interest. Interest comes in the form of finding time to work on things, missed sleep, making excuses, writing emails with new estimated completion times, spending HOURS scheduling a one hour meeting (because everyone else is overloaded as well).Much simpler to visualize our work, limit our work-in-progress, and have some sanity.To learn more about how visualizing your work and limiting your work in progress can help you gain focus and achieve more, register for Modus Institute’s latest online course: Personal Kanban.For more on hacking your brain to increase productivity and satisfaction at work, at home, and everywhere in between, sign up for the Modus Institute Newsletter. Brought to you by the creators of Personal Kanban.

Personal Kanban and Micromanagement

micromanagement

At one time or another we've all lost faith in a process and reacted by wanting to keep track of every detail. We want to make sure it gets done right. We want to make sure that we and others don't look bad.That person micromanaging you is no different. They have lost faith in a process they can't see. So ... let them see it. If we all have access to real-time information managers can do what they are supposed to do: facilitate the completion of important work. Without that information, they cannot facilitate. Without being able to facilitate, they will control.This video shows how all this works.

Capacity: It's a Matter of Content...and Context

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Envision This:You're heading to a cabin in the mountains for a week-long getaway with your family. Your car is in the shop so you schedule a rental to be delivered.In addition to six bags of groceries, a box of pots/pans/utensils, and a cooler full of water, your four children each pack a suitcase; your wife packs three, your mom and dad who are visiting pack two. They then proceed to set their luggage along the curb.Your two daughters ask if they could each take their best friend, bringing your passenger count to ten, and luggage count to eleven.The weather forecast for the next few days predicts lots of sun. So you tell the kids to grab their bikes, and stand them next to the luggage. You then head into the garage to pull out the bike rack.Conditions on the lake are likewise supposed to be ideal and so you ready up your single axle trailer with your 28 foot sailboat.You’re kneeling on the sidewalk next to the curb, tightening a bolt in the boat hitch when a clap of thunder followed by a flash of lightening pierces the unexpectedly darkening sky. Just then the rental car pulls up. Still eye-level to the wheels, and through the initial drops of a soon to be teeming rain, the first thing you notice is that the air pressure on the back two tires is low.It isn’t until you stand up that you notice the second thing: the car they delivered...is a Miata.To recap:6 bags of groceries1 box of cooking paraphernalia1 cooler of water10 people11 suitcases6 bikes1 boat1 2-seat RoadsterWithout having visualized your capacity first, how could you possibly have known how much would fit in the car?Keep in mind the overload here isn’t simply attributed to people, provisions, and luggage. A host of other factors would further diminish the car’s capacity including the wind resistance created by the bike rack, the added weight of the boat trailer, decreased visibility and traction during the four hour ascent up the mountain during a storm, and lower fuel efficiency due to the decreased tire pressure.

Capacity - it’s not only impacted by content, but by context.

It’s the same with information. Despite the persistent, insidious, and scientifically proven to be counterproductive practice of expecting knowledge workers to multitask, people - like automobiles - are not unconstrained resources. When it comes to processing cognitively complex tasks, our brain has finite processing capacity.Especially when it comes to knowledge work, understanding capacity as well as the potential for variation is paramount. Much in the way the car above would be impacted by external conditions, the brain’s bandwidth is likewise impacted by its context. Physical illness, emotional stress, hunger, and fear of threats real or imagined likewise impact cognitive capacity, compromising performance and quality.Visualizing your work and limiting your work in progress on a Personal Kanban allows you to not only to see, understand, and communicate your capacity to others, but it likewise prevents against taking on more work than you can handle. And when contextual factors are at play, such as mood, health, energy level, task difficulty etc., Personal Kanban helps you respond to that variation, allowing you to adjust your capacity by dropping your WIP limit accordingly.

For more on how Personal Kanban can help you visualize, understand, and improve your capacity while giving you the agility to respond to variation, 

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Five Years of Personal Kanban | Travel, Exploration, and Learning

It's been 5 wonderful years since Tonianne and I released the Personal Kanban book.The people we've met, the problems we've helped solve, the boards we've seen have been amazing. Every problem we've seen has had unique bits and predictable bits. What's been fun is learning what are those really predictable parts, what parts seem predictable, and what is novel.We've learned a lot since we started Modus Cooperandi and since we launched the book. Why we make certain decisions, why we focus on some things and not others, why we are so easily distracted, what systems actually help us create quality work and finish.This year we've launched a new webinar series and an online Personal Kanban class that extends what was in the book.  Why an online class and not another book? Because we've found that human contact and short bursts of information mean a lot when adults are learning.We hope to see you there and thank you for five years of Personal Kanban awesome!

Take the RealWIP Test

Write Down Your WIP

If you are already using Personal Kanban or another kanban system, you are likely at least thinking about limiting your work-in-progress (WIP). You are likely finding that challenging.We know that the more work we take on, the more our brains' resources are taxed. That tax limits our ability to focus, to process, and to complete quality work. We want to limit our work-in-progress so that we can finish quickly and with quality.One thing to remember is that if it were easy to limit WIP, we’d all be doing it already. Limiting WIP is challenging in a world filled with demands and distractions. Often we’ll be watching our Personal Kanban and, as long as there’s three things in DOING, we’ll feel pretty good about ourselves.Then, one day, we’ll catch ourselves working on something that isn’t in DOING and we’ll realize … oh no, I have hidden WIP.Hidden WIP is that work you do all the time that you don’t tell your board about.So it’s helpful once a week to sit down and write down your WIP.  Simply write down everything you are really doing right now. Write down everything you are currently working on or is making you think. (You may be starting tasks before you pull them). See what that real load is. If you work with a team or manage them, sit down and do this with the team.You’ll be surprised at how much work you are actually taking on.I can’t stress how important this is even for experienced kanban users. I visit teams and counsel individuals regularly who are overloaded with work and have very nice WIP-limited Personal Kanban boards. Their hidden WIP is killing them.So, sit down, write down your real WIP and do something about it.