Do you think a manager needs to engage in personal effectiveness: formulate goals and objectives, celebrate their completion, sum up the results of the day, week, month, year? Do you have a task scheduler? Do you keep a diary, or is everything in the app? How do you generally approach this task? Maybe you keep everything in your head?
There is a good saying: “Even the sharpest mind becomes dull due to the dullness of everyday problems.” In addition, many are probably familiar with the problem when, while engaged in an important task, we switch to tactical tasks and go somewhere aside, sometimes for several minutes or hours, and sometimes for days/weeks. And then it’s like we emerge from a dream. At the same time, according to both our experience and the opinion of Eliyahu Goldratt, the author of Theory of systems limitation, it is often the manager who is the limitation of the system (company or division): his settings, productivity, efficiency. And this article will be dedicated specifically to you, to increasing your productivity and effectiveness. This is achieved through a combination of key tools of our approach:
building planning and control processes, that is, building regular management practices;
supporting your motivation and preventing burnout;
using digital tools and automation, combined with manual work to drive thinking and analysis.
Additionally, in order to fully unleash the potential of our algorithm, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the works of Maxim Dorofeev:
Content:
There is a saying: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest path to victory. Tactics without strategy is just vanity before defeat” (Sun Tzu, China, 543-496 BC). And our algorithm is an attempt to combine tactics and strategy, a consequence of many years of personal practice, when it is necessary to conduct several projects at the same time: 2-3 work projects plus personal tasks. What is its use? It allows you to implement a full-fledged management cycle on the scale of the personality of the manager himself.
1. Planning for the day, week, month, year
Allows you not to get confused in the hustle and bustle of operational tasks and adhere to strategic goals, and make the right decisions in crisis situations
Yes, the plan will always change and be adjusted, this is normal. But you will still go towards the goal, or the goal will be adjusted. The main thing is that it will be conscious. This is where the saying of Dwight Eisenhower (US Army General and 34th President of the United States, holder of the Soviet Order of Victory ) came from: “ A plan is nothing, planning is everything. Any plan becomes obsolete the moment you have completed its development. But in the process planning, you and your subordinates acquire one view of the situation and decision-making criteria, therefore, in a moment of surprise, they will choose the right decision."
Allows you to save mental fuel and resources of a slow system, reduces stress
Maxim Dorofeev writes about this very well, based on the works of American psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. You simply do not waste valuable mental fuel, of which we have 2 hours a day, thinking about “what needs to be done, what are my strategic goals,” but simply take a task that is understandable to the inner monkey and work on it. Either when you work during the day, or when you are planning your next one. As a result, it is easier for you to organize yourself and minimize the need for additional motivation, which means your stress load is reduced.
2. Monitoring and marks on task completion
Allows you to gradually improve the quality of planning
By observing how many tasks are completed and how many are not, which ones exactly, you begin to better understand yourself and your workload. Thus, a retrospective in projects is one of the key and mandatory tools for improving the quality of planning and minimizing risks. We talk about this in our book and articles about project management, and this is a mandatory element of Scrum .
You prevent yourself from burnout
By noting completed tasks and seeing progress, you reward your brain and stimulate the production of dopamine. And such dopamine, earned through hard work, is more valuable for the brain. And here again, there are 2 mechanics at work, which are needed for ambitious and long-term tasks. Firstly, by completing intermediate tasks, you begin to formulate them simpler and more understandable for you and reduce the procrastination gap. Secondly, by getting small victories and seeing results, you prevent burnout and maintain motivation at an optimal level, requiring less encouragement from others. Therefore, one of our recommendations is to keep a diary in a text editor, summing up both every day and at the end of the week.
Element #1: Digital Tools
Here, first of all, you need to choose the connection that is convenient for you personally. We recommend the combination of SingularityApp + Word + Notes as a basic option. The key here is. so that notes are available both on your phone and on your PC. For example, Google Keep is great. And as a program, choose any convenient one. The key is the ability to automate the repetition of regular tasks and make it convenient for you. In this scheme we:
in an application (for example, SingularityApp) we automate repetitive tasks, set up checklists, enter tasks with due dates beyond next week. We conduct weekly reviews of projects and all tasks, creating a list of tactical tasks for the next week
in the notes we have a backlog of tasks for the week (you can perform a task on different days of the week, a simple backlog helps you be more flexible and minimizes the need to go into the application) and for the day. We also recommend using notes to record what you do during the day. If it is not possible to record, you can specify the time and record the event, or use voice input.
in Worde ( template below ) summarize the day, week, month and year. Ideally, you keep a diary, but this is for the most purposeful; basically, it’s enough to write down a backlog of tasks and mark completion.
Element 2: handmade
Manual work is necessary to increase your level of awareness, maintain flexibility and improve the quality of planning.
Hands are best:
write down the results of the day in Word or another text editor, note what is completed in full, what is partially done, what is not, adjust the plan for the day. This takes about 10-15 minutes;
do the same with the results and plans of the week, month and year: results and task backlog. Here we add a little basic mathematics: what % of tasks are completed completely, partially or not completed at all. This takes about 30-45 minutes per week. Ideally, you should also write down the key reasons, but this is not necessary. We recommend that if you want growth, you follow the OKR planning approach: completing 70% of the assigned tasks is normal.
Check list
1. You must have goals and objectives for:
year;
month;
week;
day.
2. It is better to keep strategic goals for the year in the appendix. The key is to return to them at least when planning each month, ideally during the weekly review.
We automate repeatable tasks in applications according to a schedule. We keep tactical (for a week) and operational (for a day) in notes or a diary, whichever is more comfortable for you to work with
3. At the end of the day, we write out the results from the notes in Word, mark (preferably by filling) the completion of tasks (full, partial, or did not complete anything) and plan or adjust the plan for the next / current day. You can sum up the results in the morning, with a fresh head.
4. At the end of the week, we mark the completion of tasks from the weekly list. We also note full implementation, partial and unfulfilled. We recommend writing out % for each group so that you can see relative indicators and track dynamics. We plan a backlog of tasks for the next week; the most critical tasks can be divided into days of the week. We also plan weekly tasks taking into account the monthly plan, preferably looking at tasks for the year.
5. At the end of the month, we do similar work to weekly planning and summing up. We definitely focus on the tasks for the year. We summarize the results of the month either on the last day of the month or on the next weekend.
6. In your daily task list, it is better to highlight 3-4 key tasks that need to be completed, and additional ones. These can be “green” development tasks, and red ones that need to be completed here and there. The same can be done on a weekly and monthly basis.
7. In Word, we recommend using a heading structure, then you can quickly find the year, month and specific day.
8. If an unexpected task arises during the day, we simply write it down in the list for the day; if for the next week, in the list of tasks for the next week; maybe in notes or directly in the application; if a more distant task, in the application.
9. You can plan according to the principle of either 100% completion, or, if the focus is on growth, 70%.
As promised, below is a Word file with pre-installed markup so that you can take it and immediately work in it