Tools for Thought

Frogs can’t recognize dead flies as food. They only eat flies that are either walking or in flight, since a frog’s vision only keys on motion. Most office cultures have the same blindness to work transpiring in plain sight. Managers are unable to recognize the difference between thrashing and threshing, compelling workers to indulge in the sort of conspicuous production that characterizes Type A, inefficient activity.

Not all thrashing is imputed by supervisors. Many people work at an accelerated pace that offers no added value beyond ego gratification — what Herbert Marcuse used to call the Performance Principle in his modification to Freud’s Reality Principle.

We need to distinguish between two types of speed:

• Speed of motion — doing things fast
• Speed of execution — completing things soon

Notice that except in limited endeavors like competitive sports, the relationship between the two types of speed is orthogonal at best. Making fast mistakes, adding tasks that are off the critical path (gratuitious meetings, forwarding copies of email to managers “just in case”), and generating anxiety within a group through excessive bustle do nothing to expedite a project’s completion.

Slowing down by writing down

One of the first sources of manufactured speed and urgency is operating from mental RAM — keeping a to do list in your head. With a written list that captures everything that needs to be done, updated regularly throughout the day, the mind can let go of the virtual action list it keeps in short term memory.

People who keep task lists in their heads have to do things fast, before they forget them. They constantly pester others for status updates because, lacking a Waiting For list, they fear that they’ll forget which tasks they handed off; they’re reminding themselves as much as others. They only track two or three Most Important Tasks for that day because short term memory lacks additional capacity to hold more tasks, even if several of them are relatively simple and would only take minutes to complete.

Slowing down by collecting and organizing

Having appropriate placeholders for incoming material is essential. While most office workers pay sufficient, or excessive, attention to how their digital world is configured, managing paperwork is often a bigger improvement opportunity.

Being able to glace at a document and say, “I don’t have time to deal with this now,” then throw it in your intray creates far less stress than shoving it to the side of your desk with other paperwork whose priority is undistinguished. But this requires having a protocol that dictates:

• If something is on your desk, it’s related to the one project you’re currently engaged with
• If something is in your in-basket, it’s something that either hasn’t had a decision made on it yet, or is the very last thing you were working on before you were interrupted
• Everything in neither of the above categories is filed in general reference or trashed

It’s increasingly common to hear people say that their workflow is almost completely electronic. Answer this question: Is there anything paper on your desk at this moment? If your office is mostly paperless, then a physical in-basket and a paper-based general reference filing system is still needed to close any leaks in your workflow. If it’s entirely paperless (all documents are scanned, emailed or e-faxed), then you don’t. It’s a question of whether you use paper, not how much.

Without having a place to physically index things you’re not working on at any given moment, you have to mentally index them every time you look at your desk. You have better things to do with your mind.

Slowing down by accurate planning

Completion dates are for planning, not goal setting. Unless a deadline is a “because I said so” target set by your boss or client, check your ego at the door and avoid “aggressive” schedules. Let the logistics of any milestones or dependencies involved determine your completion dates, not exceptional performance from yourself or others.

Projects larger than those that only need one or two next actions defined to drive them forward call for risk mitigation. Make a mind map, or at least a checklist, to identify any contingencies that might push the project’s completion beyond the most realistic scenario, then ask, “What would I do to prevent X?” or “What would I do to fix X?” for each of those contingencies.

Make your mistakes on paper, and address any potential problems before starting the project, so that when it’s time to execute the project, you’re not compelled to work at accelerated pace to create slack that should have been incorporated by design in the first place.