Are You Just Doing Things?

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I’ll bet you have a lot of things to do. 

Of course you do.We all do.A Personal Kanban anti-pattern that I’m seeing is that people are filling their kanbans with things to do and then...doing them.They are becoming productivity machines. And that’s...really bad.Look, there’s a limitless amount of things to do and you can become super efficient and do much more of them than you ever dreamed possible. And if you do that, soon you will burn out.So I ask you, Why not figure out which work is important?This happened to us recently at Modus. We had our board which we’d been using for a year. The backlog was filling up with tasks that could be done, but didn’t necessarily need to be done.At client sites and in classes, we frequently use our own board as an example. And our board clearly showed this anti-pattern.So we did a few things that I will recommend today:1. Categorize the Backlog - We divided our backlog into sequestered categories of projects. This helped us see where projects were in their completion and what areas of work were taking up most of our time.2. Clean Up the Backlog - Clean up the backlog by deleting old tasks that have aged out or that people want to care about but don’t really care about.3. Pick Dominant and Secondary Projects - One project at any given time should be your main focus. There will always be immediate, context-specific, daily tasks you need to do - but one project should be focused on and completed. Secondary projects are those which need to be done, but are either not the immediate focus or are supporting that focus.4. Clean Up the Done Column - Done columns can fill up, especially when we are hyper-productive. Soon we have our boards laden with stickies covering each other and we don’t know what we did, when we did it, or why we did it that way. Dirty done columns are worse than to-do lists.What you might notice in these four steps is that we didn’t prioritize our tasks, we didn’t make big plans, we altered the board to flow better and our the relationship to the work to be more focused.In the next four posts, I’ll talk more about each one in depth.Written in Mesa, Arizona

HOW TO: How to Limit WIP #4– How to Size Tasks (sort of)

Strangely, although people routinely overburden themselves with work, their first objection to limiting work-in-progress is “don’t all my tasks need to be the same size? How do I size my work?” They hear the possibility that we can get more work done in a system where we see our work and focus on completion, but they are doubtful that this is enough.So, after never paying attention to your work at all, now you want to be a superhuman estimator as well?

Simply changing how we think about work can help us manage work.

Ultimately, for me, I recommend not paying attention to task size at all at first. Wait until you actually see your work flow for a while.But, at some point, you will start to get a little more sophisticated and start to really wonder about task sizes.In this video, Stephen Covey plays a game where he coerces this apparent executive to place rocks in a tub. The goal is to put in the big rocks after all the little tasks have been achieved. The little tasks can be seen as interruptions, distractions, or the day-to-day minutia of working.The end-result is that it is, of course, easier to plan for the big rocks (by putting them in first) and there’s still plenty of capacity for the little rocks to fit into the nooks and crannies.I really love Stephen Covey and have gained mightily from his insights. However here, we can see a few flaws and they related precisely to our fears about task sizing and estimation.  (Go on, watch the video, then come back to this…)

Planning for the Big Rocks

Our issue here is that we are trying to size elements (little rocks) of larger concepts (big rocks) without fully understanding the larger concepts. How many of us focus on the task we are assigned, but don’t question the overall project?  How many of us get bogged down in a task and then notice the deadline looming and say, “I’ll make up for this delay later?” How many of us take on a two-hour project that we work on for two-days?In short, we can’t really distinguish big and little rocks.We end up focusing on the size of tasks and not the flow of tasks. We wonder what the cost of delay is, but we can’t measure it because there is no flow for the delay to impact.Covey is making the same mistake most people make, he thinks those things are ROCKS.

This implies that they have definite shape, weight, and color. Corporate planning is not a solid, it is a gas. It will fill the space you provide. If you give Covey’s rocks no definition, they will swell up and overflow your big plastic tub. (Am I really posting about gaseous rocks?)This tortured analogy is necessary only because we all simultaneously conceive of projects as definite and without form. We recognize the number of unknowns. We make plans and they scare us. The more scared we are, the more we try to tightly control our projects. This is like bearhugging a water balloon. At some point we control too much (hug too tightly) and it explodes all over us. Then we get frustrated and blame the balloon. (more analogies!)

Better the Bucket

Projects are actually the bucket. Tasks are the rocks. Most tasks, as Covey shows, are pebbles. They flow through our day as easily, and as awkwardly, as they did when she poured them in at the end. Most flew right on in, but every so often she had to stop and shake the bucket.That made everyone laugh, and it made her and Covey grin conspiratorial little grins.Why? Because it was awkward.And so is our work.In the end, the size of any of those tasks didn’t matter a bit. What did matter is she devised a system that noted that there were observable differences in her task types. She put one task type in first, in a deliberate way, and then allowed the other task type to flow.  In this case it was physical size.In other cases it could be something else.

Context Has a Size

Tasks all have context that relate to our concept of their size. If I told you, your task was to walk into the next room and get something I just printed out of the printer, you’d estimate the size of that task to be small. If the next room involved crossing a pool filled with crocodiles, you might be surprised when it took you longer.The politics, emotional weight, and implementation details of the seemingly smallest task can prove to be gigantic. We simply won’t know until we understand the system. When she understood Covey’s system, she changed her approach to work.Size might matter.

HOW TO: How to Limit WIP #3–Reducing Interruptions

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Four hours ago, I walked up to a big pad of paper and started mind mapping all the types of interruptions we might face while trying to get our work done.

• While I was working, Tonianne, who was on Skype, wanted to do a microphone test.

• Then I received an e-mail for a meeting request from a client.

• While responding to that, I received a lunch request from a colleague.

• While responding to that, e-mail arrived from another client with documents needed for our meeting. So I accepted those Google docs and scanned them.

• While responding to that, my bladder told me that I should rush off for a bio break.

• After that, I rushed to the board and started writing furiously about things that might interrupt us.

• Then Tonianne wanted to discuss some work that was coming up.

• Then I had my meeting.

And now, 3.5 hours later, I am finally writing this blog post.My goal is to get this done by my call at 1 pm.How do we limit our work-in-progress in a world of constant interruptions?Interruptions are more common in knowledge work than work, it seems. They are little things, one minute, five minutes, ten minutes. Happening here and there.

What is an Interruption?

The Free Dictionary defines Interruption as:

in·ter·rupt (nt-rpt)

v.in·ter·rupt·ed, in·ter·rupt·ing, in·ter·rupts

1. To break the continuity or uniformity of: Rain interrupted our baseball game.

2. To hinder or stop the action or discourse of (someone) by breaking in on: The baby interrupted me while I was on the phone.

3. To break in on an action or discourse.

All three of these are important to us at work. While we are working, we are achieving (hopefully) a state of flow. Both in the psychological and the mechanical sense of the word, we are actively focusing, working, and completing the task at hand.An interruption is anything that breaks that flow-state. <The phone just rang. On call for 2m13s.>When we break that flow state, just like that side comment about my own interruption broke up the flow of this post, we have several states we transition through:

1. Initial shock (Oh my god, I’m being Interrupted!)

2. Adjustment (Context switch into new context)

3. Existence (Live in new context)

4. Closure (Close off new context)

5. Return (Return to previous context)

Depending on the detail needed by the interruption, these states can take take minutes, tens of minutes, or more. Luckily for me, my interruption was minor and rather fun, so leaving the blog post and coming back was relatively easy.

Interruptions and You

Since most interruptions are small, routine, and often important, we tend not to notice them. When interruptions are annoying, we do notice them. Then, when we are late in finishing something, we will blame our lateness on the annoying interruption and conveniently forget all the other ones.The fact is that interruptions are part of knowledge work. We seldom do it alone, which means we have colleagues. Colleagues require information. Information requires communication. Communication requires attention.We are also social animals. So, if I come into your office and say, “Hey, I need to talk to you about the Amalgamated Salamander contract,” you are likely going to say, “Okay,” and we’ll talk. Even if you say “No,” you are unlikely to simply say “No,” and ignore me from then on, because that’s rude. And if you are truly rude, you will not stop at “No,” you’ll tell me exactly why you don’t have time for me which is still an interruption.We cannot declare interruptions as waste, either. Knowledge work and personal work is fraught with rapid changes in context. Micropriorities that never existed on your project plan crop up every day. Like “Hey, Barb’s out sick, you still want to have that meeting?” Or “I just got this fax from the FDA and they are claiming that epoxy isn’t a food and we have to pull our Gluey-Chooies off the market.” Things like that.So, we need to understand what our interruptions really are, before we decide that we want to eliminate them.There are many systems out there to help you isolate yourself from interruptions, but completely closing yourself off from change – in an environment with high degrees of change – doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Understanding Interruptions

In order to know a thing, you must become a thing. So, you must first go out and interrupt as many people as you can.No … scratch that.In order to understand interruptions, a good place to start is to (surprise) visualize them. Here are some suggested ways in increasing levels of complexity.Write Them Down: That’s simple enough. Keep a pad of paper nearby and when you are interrupted by ANYTHING write it down. Even if you are interrupted by daydreaming about how awesome lunch is going to taste.Add Them to Your Kanban: Get a special shaped sticky notes, like maybe ones shaped like the human cochlea (or something) and add substantial interruptions to your board. This way you can track them and see them mixed with your other work.Record Severity:  Create a table on a sheet of paper. 8 rows for the hours of the day, and 12 boxes for five minute increments. Then color in the boxes during which you were interrupted from your primary task.Now that you’ve recorded them. Ask some key questions:

• Are these interruptions necessary?

• Did I provide or receive value while involved in this interruption?

• Does this interruption happen frequently?

• Can I schedule this interruption, making it a planned event?

• Did I have the time and mental capacity to help with this interruption?

Again, the goal is not to eradicate interruptions. The goal is to understand them and work with them. Some will be waste and you can remove them. Some will be part of your job and you must find elegant ways to work with them.

Limiting Work in Progress

After you understand the nature of your interruptions, you can build much more resilient strategies for limiting work-in-progress. We can limit unnecessary interruptions, understand when it is appropriate for us to sequester ourselves in a Pomodoro, and structure our work to allow us to stay as much within our WIP limits as possible.Photo: “Dorrie Interrupts Sissy Bathing” by Paul Schultz.

HOW TO: How to Limit WIP #2–Affinity Mapping

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Does this look familiar?

This is a problem, because an disorderly and frightening READY column is, in and of itself, a form of work-in-progress. Even if you are limiting your WIP, looking at that huge string of demanding post-its weighs us down just looking at it.

When we limit our personal Work-in-progress, our ultimate goal is to provide a calm, stable, and flowing state of work. We want a system that allows us to focus on the task and hand and complete quality work.

Having a huge, daunting backlog undermines our quality and destroys our focus.

What we need to do is focus this work. We can start by gathering some of those tasks together into groups and taking a look at what they really are.

We can do this by doing a quick exercise called Affinity Mapping.

We take the bulk of the stickies that we have in our read column and we sort them into groups that feel right. These might be easy, medium, and hard. These might be project 1, project 2, project 3. There might be two categories or there might be ten.

Lightroom-3

In the end, however, you’ll have your pile of pain sorted into easy-to-digest groups.

Then, you can name your groups. In this case they are “Household Projects”, “Office Work”, and “End-of-Year Taxes”.

Now we have a little more clarity over what is in our backlog. The previously undifferentiated jumble is a bit more orderly. We can now pull work knowing a few new things:

1. What projects we are really working on

2. What we are completing (and what we are procrastinating on).

3. What work we need to schedule for and what work can simply flow

4. Which tickets are still scary

headings with backlog

Perhaps the most important thing is that the cognitive load of the original backlog was enormous. That added to our work-in-progress. The cognitive load of this new organized backlog (no matter how you feel about doing your taxes or cleaning) is much less. Your brain is spending less time and energy trying to make sense of what’s coming up.

HOW TO: Limit Your Work-in-Progress #1–Calm Down and Finish

We had a long series, which is soon to become a mini-book, on why you should limit your work-in-progress (WIP). In it we focused on the dangerous side effects of being overworked, of which there are many. Those articles show how an organization might begin to limit WIP, but not really the individual.

And, since this is the Personal Kanban site after all, we should probably talk about how we, as individuals, can limit our WIP.

For this first post, we’re going to start with the simplest answer. The sports shoe answer – just do it.

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The key to just doing anything is not doing everything else. David Allen promotes a “stop doing” list to compliment a “to do” list. In that vein, here we don’t want to prematurely end tasks you are working on an never revisit them, but we do want to postpone some tasks so that other can be completed. In the beginning, a large part of our READY column will be populated with tasks we know we already started, but are setting aside to focus on the few tasks in WIP.

Calm Down

The first thing to do here is to recognize that the work you are setting aside will get done. In fact, by setting it aside and waiting to complete the tasks in Doing, you will likely get it done sooner than if you didn’t defer it in the first place.  So, calm down, your current fears of delayed completion are due to how long its taken you to finish things in the past – in a non-WIP limited world.

Why was it so hard before?

We covered this in the Why Limit WIP Series:

• It’s hard to remember well in a chaotic environment

• Completion is fulfilling

• Multi-tasking Creates Overhead

• Context Switching destroys our ability to think

• There is no social cost for taking on work

• We have no healthy constraints to stop us from overworking

• We are fundamentally unaware of the impacts of our workload

When we limit our WIP, we are able to focus, complete faster (much faster), and likely have an end product of higher quality.

We’ve been told over the years that productivity is a good thing. However, true productivity means completing things of quality – not simply doing lots of things at the same time and completing very little.

It should be common sense that if we focus on one thing, we will complete it faster.

We need to lose our irrational fear of not being productive, and replace that with embracing being effective.

So calm down, take a look at the task at hand, focus on it, and finish.

A Note

This will work most of the time. However, there are some complexities. We want to know:

• What is the right thing to work on?

• What is standing in my way of completion?

• How large of tasks should I be taking on?

• I have so many people counting on me, how do I tell some of them to wait?

• I’m interrupted so many times a day, how can I focus?

We will cover these in upcoming posts.