Tiago Forte's Blog, page 46
June 3, 2018
Just-In-Time PM #16: Effective ROA
In Part 15, I advocated for multithreading, or weaving together multiple projects to take advantage of unexpected opportunities and synergies.
To take advantage of the benefits of multithreading, it’s critical that you begin to think of yourself not as a lone project manager, but as a project portfolio manager (PPM). Traditionally found only in large companies with hundreds of simultaneous projects, digital technology has made it possible and necessary for each of us to manage a portfolio.
The two most important skills you’ll need as a PPM are:
Choosing the right projects to start (good inputs)
Maximizing project completions (good outputs)
To accomplish these, we’ll need to refine our understanding of Return on Attention (ROA), first introduced in Part 1.
When determining the return on our attention, our natural inclination is to focus on throughput, which is how many projects actually get completed.
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June 2, 2018
Just-In-Time PM #15: Multithreading
In Part 14, we looked at the potential for massively increasing our bandwidth by creating “personal productivity networks.” These networks are made up of packets of work that move between “nodes” where some kind of intelligence is applied, whether human or software-based.
But what does it look like to operate such a network in our day to day work?
Through multithreading, a term borrowed from modern computing. While multitasking is switching rapidly between tasks, and is absolutely not a good idea, multithreading is switching rapidly between projects, and is essential. They may seem similar, but in fact require completely different approaches.
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June 1, 2018
Personal Sprints: Applying Design Thinking to Your Life
There are many practices that have emerged in recent years to accelerate progress at work: daily stand-ups, weekly review meetings, and my favorite – sprints. In this context, a sprint is a set period of time that is dedicated to achieving a goal. Many tech companies have adopted this method in some form based on years of trial-and-error experimentation.
After seeing how sprints helped accelerate ideas at Degreed, an idea popped into my mind: “What if I applied this exact same concept to my personal life, using the same techniques of iterative innovation and rapid feedback loops?”
And so the journey began.
Drawing inspiration from sprints, I wanted to see what would happen if I did a personal reflection every month instead of waiting for a whole year to pass before checking in with my resolutions. I wanted to see how my life would change if I had a clear focus and achieved a goal each month, instead of setting and forgetting my goals each year.
2016 was the year of experimentation, when I started and finished 12 projects in 12 months. These projects ranged from hosting Sunday dinners in a new city to exercising every week. Because of these projects, I was able to explore my interests, build up skills, and become a more effective learner over time. Having that foundation set me up for things I couldn’t have imagined beforehand. For example, starting One Month Projects, an online project accelerator program for those who want to make their life more effective via personal sprints.
The Foundation of Personal Sprints
A personal sprint is similar to a work sprint, except we focus on goals in our personal life. I’ve found it helpful to think about personal sprints using Google’s design sprint framework:
Google’s sprint framework:
[image error]
Modeled after IDEO’s design thinking concepts, Google has greatly benefited from these sprints, which have led to products like Gmail. Other companies such as Uber, Slack and Blue Bottle Coffee have seen significant results as well.
The process consists of generating an idea, building it, launching it and learning from it to improve the idea later. As shown by the grey circle above, the sprint is a process of understanding and testing a problem to be solved, before fully launching into solution development. We can apply this same concept to ourselves, except what we are developing is not a product, but our life paths.
Why do a personal sprint?
A personal sprint is based on the process-first approach of productivity, where the main focus is creating a system that can be seamlessly used over and over again. After all, no one is equipped with perfect knowledge – rather, we pick up what we need to learn, mostly through trial and error. This iterative learning serves us well, especially with today’s ever-changing technology and the fact that the most in-demand careers today did not even exist ten years ago. Personal sprints give you a process to keep up and evolve with the changing landscape.
My personal sprints are done in 30 day iterations, consisting of monthly reviews (in which I document the progress on my goals) and monthly projects (in which I experiment with and live the month through those lenses). These personal sprints have empowered me to acquire skills in the areas of being a full-stack freelancer, building educational chatbots, and creating my own focused MBA program, etc.
Benefits of a personal sprint
While everyone’s goals are different, and will lead to different creations and experiences, here are some common foundational benefits to personal sprints:
Shortcut time: The difference between a yearly review versus a monthly review is vast. Think about the compounding effects you get to reap when you iterate every month (twelve times a year) versus yearly (once a year). When I used to only do yearly reviews, I’ve found that usually I would either forget the goal I had at the beginning of the year (which often became less relevant as time passed); or, I was just floundering in different directions without a goal. More frequent reviews give you more data points, and as a result a clearer direction.
10x your productivity: Productivity matters the most when you are both effective (working on the right things) and efficient (getting things done). For example, with personal sprints, I was able to experiment with a variety of side businesses to test out potential careers. As a result of testing five side businesses in five months, I quickly learned that I liked some ideas more than I actually liked doing them. For example, I thought I wanted to be a dance teacher, but after experimenting for a month, I realized that I preferred not to teach dance moves repeatedly. This is similar to an intensive internship: you can test out which direction you’d like to go towards and get clarity on your preferences.
Prototype life: Instead of waiting forever to “launch” when all the conditions are right, or delaying on trying out something until it’s perfect, you can get an experience of what it would be like with a miniature version. Personal sprints are all part of your life MVP: it’s better to know what doesn’t work now rather than wonder whether it would work for an undefined amount of time. Frequently, we wait for someday, but often that someday never comes and we end up regretting the things we missed out on by not trying. The first step is the hardest – and also the most impactful. Many aspects of my current life, such as my work, hobbies and lifestyle, were shaped and jump-started by the 12 projects in 12 months that I did in 2016 (this is also an example of small batch projects for focus, creativity and perspective).
How you can get started
Ready to try out personal sprints? Here’s how you can apply each step of Google’s sprint framework to create your own personal sprint:
The Google Sprint:
[image error]
The Google sprint is a five day sprint. On Monday, you brainstorm the problem and choose an area to focus on. On Tuesday, you sketch out potential solutions, and on Wednesday, you make a hypothesis to test. You then spend Thursday creating a prototype and test it with users on Friday.
Since you know yourself the best, you can easily tailor the process to your personal sprints, whether it is five days, a month, or longer. For the monthly sprints that I do, I tend to create an action plan at the start of each month based on a hypothesis I want to test, spend the rest of the month implementing the idea, and do a review at the end.
Below is the process you can use to start your personal sprint!
The 4 step process for personal sprints:
Idea
Choosing your goal idea is a two step process.
First, I usually have a bucket list of goals or things I want to concentrate on or get better at. Perhaps you already have some from your Project List Mindsweep, where you already filter the ones that are projects. If you’re having trouble, you can also refer to the Wheel of Life, as it covers 8 areas of life that you could generate a project in. The goal of the first step is to write down 3-5 goals.
Second, similar to work sprints, choose one that is the most relevant and has the highest ROI to your personal roadmap right now. A question you can ask yourself is: Where do I want to be in one month?
Build
Now it’s time to build an action plan. Viewing them through the lens of SMART goals (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, time-bound), what are the weekly deliverables you need to finish to hit your month-end goal?
The action plan acts as a blueprint of the steps needed to achieve the goal, for example, your current resources, your success metrics, your working sessions, etc. to make a sprint successful.
Launch
These is also some frontloading you can do to make launching your personal sprint as easy as possible. Think of how a product launch would have a lot of work to be done ahead of time like contacting the press, as well as debugging the program and perhaps even having a backup or emergency plan.
When personal sprints revolve around creating habits, sometimes I even start half a month before the actual month to acclimate. For example, for meditation, I tried to start practicing the month before so I could get used to it for when I had planned to do it every day the month after. By making these preparations, I could consistently set myself up for success for the start of each month.
Learn
The blue line that connects “learn” and “idea” on the the sprint cycle indicates where reflecting on your learnings would inform and strengthen your ideas over time, whether it’s making future ideas more feasible or relevant.
To track progress, you can ask yourself questions for weekly reviews such as: What went well? What didn’t? How can I improve for next week? To reflect more holistically, at the end of each month, you can write monthly progress reports for your goals. I’ve found it really helpful to see how the chosen personal sprint fits into my bigger life vision as well as to consider any major changes I need to do for next time. (See monthly review is a systems check + weekly review is an operating system).
Results + impact of personal sprints
As a result of doing monthly projects for the last two years, I’ve been able to experience the following results:
Workplace productivity: Before, my afternoons at work would miraculously disappear (but be really spent on the endless tunnel of news). Now that I’ve started to create projects for myself, I’m able to hone in on the internal management of my digital and mental workspace, as well as more self-awareness around my energy levels so I can optimize tasks accordingly.
With the use of these “meta-organization skills,” I was able to pick up a variety of skills in Excel, design, and front-end development during my previous daytime job.
Business growth: Due to the last two years of trial and error with learning, when I decided to quit my job, I was able to create a learning bootcamp for myself around writing and instructional design complete with monthly goals and action plans.
As a result, I was able to launch two businesses at the beginning of this year around those two areas: a content consultancy agency for EdTech companies and an online coaching + course called One Month Projects.
Life well-being: Right now, I’m as mentally and physically healthy as I’ve ever been. Before, I would dabble in creative pursuits, and exercise here and there. Now, I have solid habits around meditation, writing and videography as well as the ability to do twenty push-ups (which I’m still super proud of given the fact that I couldn’t even lift up my own mattress before!). Keystone habits like eating healthy and sleeping regularly also naturally became a priority.
In addition, with personal sprints, I was also able to align my life and career. My designed career allows me to have the flexibility to spend time with those closest to me (friends and family) and spend time on things I truly care about (education and self-expression).
Conclusion
When I first started the year-long project in 2016, I was wandering amidst the fog of confusion. With each iteration, it became more clear which direction I wanted to go in and how to get there. The future of work is experimentation, and personal sprints are ongoing experiments to create the life you want.
Your Turn
Now the next step is: what will you choose to be your first personal sprint?
Whether you have a concrete idea or some rough sketches, check out this personal sprint project checklist to get started. Or take my course One Month Projects and I will take you through the process myself!
I’ll also be available at yunzhe@yunzhezhou.com if you have any thoughts or questions.
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Just-In-Time PM #14: Personal Productivity Networks
In Part 13, we looked at the benefits of Component Thinking, which involves thinking of any product we are working on as made up of subcomponents, which can be evolved or swapped out over time.
Now I’d like to take a step back and consider the big picture of what it means to work in small packets.
The implicit model of human productivity that most people hold is a pipe with a fixed diameter. You can only push so many units of work through the pipe at any one time, so it’s better to dedicate your full bandwidth to one thing before moving on to something else. This is apparent when you hear people turn down new projects or commitments with the phrase “I don’t have the bandwidth.”
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May 31, 2018
Just-In-Time PM #13: Component Thinking
In Part 12, I described the shift from a just-in-case to a just-in-time philosophy of work, using late starts as an example of the benefits it offers.
But if nearly everything can be done later, and there are major benefits to doing so, one question comes to the forefront: what in the world should I do now?
As the constraints on how we work continue to fall away, and you can potentially do any kind of work from anywhere, at any time, the spectre of choice overload looms large. Every minute, you are faced with seemingly infinite options for what to pursue. Instead of being liberating, this possibility is often overwhelming.
Thankfully, there is a good answer for what to do at any given time, which is Principle #5: “Create subcomponents as early as possible.” I define a subcomponent as “an inherently valuable piece of a potential future project.”
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May 30, 2018
Just-In-Time PM #12: Just-In-Case to Just-In-Time
In Part XI, I introduced the concept of a “critical path” of tasks in a project, and the rationale for pushing tasks as late as possible on the timeline.
The late starts approach inspires a tremendous amount of resistance, especially from creative knowledge workers. It sounds an awful lot like taking control from individual employees, centralizing it in a central decision maker, and forcing people to finish everything at breakneck speed at the last minute.
It’s curious to note that the same people who tend to oppose late starts also pay homage to Toyota’s methods, loudly proclaiming their allegiance to books like The Lean Startup that were inspired by it. Yet no one mentions that early starts are the very antithesis of the just-in-time vision.
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May 28, 2018
Just-In-Time PM #11: Late Starts on the Critical Path
In Part X, I argued that digital knowledge work was fundamentally different than other kinds of work, because its structure, features, and purpose could be added or changed after it was built.
Principle #4 of Digital Knowledge Work is therefore to “Start everything as late as possible.”
This practice is known as “late starts,” and is taken directly from Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM), a methodology developed by business management guru Eliyahu Goldratt, based on his Theory of Constraints.
CCPM proposes that attention and people are now the most important constraints in projects, instead of time, machines, or raw materials. It is one of the first PM methodologies to put human psychology at the center of its recommendations.
To understand why and how, we first need to understand the concept of “critical path.”
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Just-In-Time PM XI: Late Starts on the Critical Path
In Part X, I argued that digital knowledge work was fundamentally different than other kinds of work, because its structure, features, and purpose could be added or changed after it was built.
Principle #4 of Digital Knowledge Work is therefore to “Start everything as late as possible.”
This practice is known as “late starts,” and is taken directly from Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM), a methodology developed by business management guru Eliyahu Goldratt, based on his Theory of Constraints.
CCPM proposes that attention and people are now the most important constraints in projects, instead of time, machines, or raw materials. It is one of the first PM methodologies to put human psychology at the center of its recommendations.
To understand why and how, we first need to understand the concept of “critical path.”
To read this story, become a Praxis member.
Praxis
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May 27, 2018
Just-In-Time PM #10: Structure, Features, and Purpose
In Part IX, I explained why it is so important to create placeholders for your work-in-process: to allow you to pursue multiple projects across different spans of time without losing your progress.
What we are converging towards is a set of core principles for how Digital Knowledge Work is fundamentally different from previous kinds of work.
Knowledge work by itself isn’t new. Humans have been working with information for centuries in different forms. But the rise of digital information technology has ushered in a revolution in how work can be executed. And with it, a revolution in how work should be executed.
We are moving from a Just-In-Case to a Just-In-Time paradigm.
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Just-In-Time PM X: Structure, Features, and Purpose
In Part IX, I explained why it is so important to create placeholders for your work-in-process: to allow you to pursue multiple projects across different spans of time without losing your progress.
What we are converging towards is a set of core principles for how Digital Knowledge Work is fundamentally different from previous kinds of work.
Knowledge work by itself isn’t new. Humans have been working with information for centuries in different forms. But the rise of digital information technology has ushered in a revolution in how work can be executed. And with it, a revolution in how work should be executed.
We are moving from a Just-In-Case to a Just-In-Time paradigm.
To read this story, become a Praxis member.
Praxis
You can choose to support Praxis with a subscription for $10 each month or $100 annually.
Members get access to:
1–3 exclusive articles per month, written or curated by Tiago Forte of Forte Labs
Members-only comments and responses
Early access to new online courses, ebooks, and events
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