How to start 2020 like a pro
New Year Resolutions are overrated, and Legends don’t plan; they just do it!
There is nothing like the excitement to kick off a brand new year, With newly crafted, refined, or refreshed resolutions and goals. The fresh feelings, emotions, awakens, new years are the new beginnings. They are simply awesome. Aren't they?
I still remember one year ago, just around the dawn of 2019, I had big plans, resolutions, a to-do list, and being smart, a not-to-do list as well.
It had really cool goals and targets to achieve during the fantastic 2019.
I loved creating detail plans. I loved creating and making promises to follow. If the internet said to do it, why would someone do otherwise?
Then started the incredible 2019. I was on track with a great list of professional and personal goals, objectives, tasks, and resolutions. Many related to my role as the head of business analysis and the great team of, then known as business analysts in our Colombo office. Naturally, I wanted to achieve great things with them too. I couldn’t ask for a better start to the brand new year.
Only, I could enjoy my perfect little plan for a few days into the year. Somewhere around mid-January, my bosses, (Yes, I have many of them), asked me to take over the global team with over 50 business analysts and product designers. And there goes my perfect plan! Now I had to find new goals and new habits to cater to the new demands. Co-working near the desk and afternoon runs no longer viable options. All face to face educational sessions planned for 25 designers had to be put on the dustbin. To work with 50 plus designers in three offices, new travel plans, further readings on their culture, drastic changes to my leadership style was on demand.
So, I had to go back to the drawing board, new plans were made, new goals and resolutions were designed, and by the end of January, I was back on track, with my perfect little plan two-point-zero.
The short February was peaceful, everything felt I am back on track, and life is under control. Then came the mighty March, trashing my perfect two-point-zero plan with another series of surprises. This time it was changed in leadership, leadership styles, structures, and even company ownership were on the table. Almost all my plans and measurable, time-bound goals were out of the window again.
The same pattern continues throughout the year. New demands in the country I live in; the company I work for; the profession I love; the team I fear; kept making my perfectly measurable objectives outdated.
Somewhere around the midpoint 2019, inspired by many, including the book MakeTime, Jake Knapp himself (yes, I met the genius in person during beautiful 2019), Google’s story in adopting OKRs, and especially, Sundar Pichai story in building chrome, I wanted to try a different approach.
Thank you for surviving my long introduction, here it is, the biggest, the greatest lesson I learned during the great 2019. My little hack to get something meaningful done in horribly distracting environments.
My hack — The Principal
One issue with goals and resolutions is, despite looking impressive on paper, they tend to focus on a more extended period. Gain 10kg is an admirable goal, but you cannot do it in one night. Hence it is hard to keep focused and stop the bad habit of running each morning. On the other hand, eating a kale salad is highly rewarding, and you feel fantastic when you’re doing it. As humans, we find immediate feedback more satisfying than having to wait for months to see results. A shorter the feedback loop always increase the focus. I felt that I needed to find activities where I can finish faster and enjoy the results sooner.
At the same time, as Jason Fried said, plans let past drive the future. You have the most information when you’re doing something, not before you do it. I worship Jason. But is it even possible to run without a plan?
This is where Mr. Pachai can help. When he took over the Chrome team, he didn’t make a plan, he set a dream, and built the damn best browser on earth. SMART (or dumbness) was pushed out of the gate (who cares about them?). All we need is a dream to chase. Something to get us out of bed each morning.
Plans are for losers! All legends need is a dream to chase. Something to get out of bed each morning!
Dreaming isn’t something new for any of us. All of us have had dreams at some point in life. I went inside and resurfaced them.
It is,
“to build the damn best design team on earth. Period.”
Not measurable, perhaps not attainable, but who cares? It’s good enough to keep me running toward a direction than wasting time on planning and resolutions.
Resolutions are also a kind of planning, and it’s overrated. On this brand new year, as the first action, throw them and planing away. And try dreaming, and dream big!
This method worked for me to have a decent year. I was out of my comfort zone throughout the year. I was asked to take over the leadership of the BA team across all company locations. I was pushed to be brave to kill the BA process and way of working that has been branded as one of the best practices in the city. I was pushed toward adopting a product designer role. Build a case for a traditional company to take a new way of working path. Tried adopting design thinking mindsets, failed miserably. Experiment with remote design sprints. I was asked to join the organizational transformation project. New challenges kept coming during the year to offset everything on each day, still my objective, my dream remained the same. The only thing I changed was how I respond to each challenge on each point with actions.
Doing what matters the most
The first part of the hack is to stay focus with big dreams. It may sound easy, but it is the hardest to do. So if you have big dreams, congratulations!
The easy part is to keep doing what matters most at each moment. Irrespective of your environment, the only safe assumption is that things will change. New challenges and opportunities will be presented each moment. You just have to assess them and tackle them as you go.
I had a few meaningful dreams inspired by OKRs, and all I had to do was what matters most at each point. It was about finding focus activities and time to do what matters most than following a detailed plan.
Doing what matters could be tricky to start. I went through many experiments to find out what worked for me. I tried marking a few days as no-meeting slack days. I decided to start saying no to many, but at the end of the year, this became my formula. (Not for success. I don’t know yet, but at least it keeps me happy).
I call it (now) focus on time and doing what matters most.
The Calendar Hack
Each morning, I start around 7:30 AM (obviously, you don’t have to copy a 7:30 AM start). I fill my calendar with sixty-minute focus blocks and fifteen-minutes breaks. If there are any appointments, I adjust these blocks to be around them. Then fill each sixty-minute slot with something you want to do or achieve, just as a simple mental note. Nothing fancy; just write down what you feel like doing, but always remember the golden rule of this experiment.
The Golden rule: Be flexible. If something new comes up during the day, use your gut to see whether it’s something more valuable than what you were doing. If so, change the plan.
However, this rule doesn’t apply to respond to others’ priorities. For example, if you get a last-minute meeting request during the day, evaluate them on merit, and don’t be afraid to say no. Remember, if someone wants to meet you, it’s their problem, not yours.
Typically my calendar looks like this,
Sixty Minutes Sprints
Sixty minutes is good enough to complete any task to the just-right quality. For example, the 1st draft of this post was written in a sixty-minute sprint, the corrections on Grammarly, and finding the right pictures and transferring to the Medium.
Often, if you spent more time on a task than it deserves, you’ll end up adding details that don’t improve the quality at the same rate. If the job genuinely needs more than sixty minutes, it could sign you should have treated it as two connected tasks than one. If this happens, don’t sweat it, just remember it in the future.
Initially, I struggled a lot to adjust to the right level of detail, so don’t worry if you cannot figure out the right balance between the right quality and value, keep doing, reflect and adjust.
My toolkit for making sixty-minute sprints super focused includes a decent noise-canceling headphone and right beat music playlist. My headphones are nothing fancy, but, if you want to reuse, this is my work in progress, Spotify playlist.
It’s a work in progress; I add and remove songs from time to time while keeping the overall duration to sixty minutes.
Disclaimer: I am a massive Ed Sheeran fan, and since Bohemian Rhapsody (the movie) I have a liking towards Queen.
The playlist starts with the “Eraser” for a reason. The lyrics influence to forget about everything and focus on the task at hand. The penultimate song is an intentionally picked classic, “Another one bites the dust”: an indication the assignment is about to bite the dust, followed by the Swedish classic: “Stad i ljus”. It was picked for two reasons: It’s the perfect ending for one hour of hard work, as it’s used as the last song for most parties. On the other hand, I am continually urged by my Swedish colleagues to learn the words for the song. So, by adding this song to my playlist, I killed two birds with one stone.
Irrespective of the playlist you choose, don’t change too often. I keep almost the same playlist for a reason. When I experimented with listening to new songs, I experienced the focus shift from the task in hand to enjoying the track. At the same time, I found out that music is essential to avoid distractions around the workstation.
OK! Enough about the playlist.
What if someone sends you an email, chat, or walk up to you during these sixty-minute sprints? Despite how urgent it may seem, emails can always wait for sixty minutes. In the cases of chat or human intrusions, I use my golden rule. Is the distraction going to add more value than what I’m doing right now? If so, switch and focus on the distraction. Just remember the second part of the rule too, others’ priority doesn’t have to be yours.
Fifteen-minute break
After each sixty-minute sprint, it is of utmost important to take a break. You may feel brave enough to skip the break and take up the next most important task. I have often made the same mistake only to experience a faster burning out rate. I felt fed up halfway through the day and ended up in a youtube rabbit hole with a lack of focus.
It is vital to get up and move. Sitting at your desk could easily drag you into an internet rabbit hole to compensate for the focus sixty minutes or overdoing the task you just finished. Some time back, I experimented with a separate desktop in my PC for breaks, but I found physically moving helps more.
I usually either take a walk to a different floor to say “Hi” to one of my team members and say how awesome they’re doing. They seem to appreciate face-to-face rave over online chat. In other cases, I just take a “me-time” walk to the coffee machine.
There is a simple formula that works for me in selecting between me-time or face-to-face Hi. When I feel I need inspiration for the next part of the day, I always pick the latter. In cases where I need a new switch task and think fresh: me-time.
One pitfall you need to be aware of is not letting these breaks take more time than they should. However, in some cases, you might need to spend more time doing something valuable with your team members. In these cases, use the golden rule: Which task will add more value at the end of the day? The chat with a team member or your next task on the list? Just follow your gut and reflect on the outcome later.
Remember, if you are picking me-time, make sure you don’t spend that 15 minutes on what you’ve done during the last sixty minutes (unless the next sixty minutes is another iteration for the task. Always focus on the future.
If you are wondering: Will 5 minutes breaks work? Does it have to be 15? It could, but it didn’t work for me. I needed at least 15 minutes to make a meaningful social interaction or the time to find the focus for a new task. Further, it helps to negate the effects of task switching. Decent breaks are good to grab a coffee and think about the next most crucial job.
In short, take a break between sprints, have a coffee, tell a team member how awesome they’re doing, and regain lost energy and focus.
At the end of the day,
I slowly adjusted my day to do a quick reflection of the tasks at the end of each day. I take 5 minutes to enjoy a nice cup of Ceylon tea and reflect. The intention is to see whether you can learn something for the next day. What worked for you (and what didn’t). For example, you might realize that you want to adjust durations. For me, 1 hour and 15 minutes and a 30 minutes lunch worked. You might figure out something else.
I consider a day to be productive on outcomes of tasks I managed to complete than the number. For me, an auspicious day could come in the form of one perfect focus sixty-minutes or as four average sprints. Despite the eight hour workday, I never had seven or eight successful sixty-minutes. So be realistic, and go easy on yourself.
Sometimes things go wrong. Expect it.
There are days where everything goes wrong, and you spent the entire day doing something wasteful. If this happens, don’t worry. It’s natural. The important part is to move forward. Bad days will come, but don’t waste time thinking about it. Further, it’s essential to be flexible. Don’t stress if you can’t make it — move on.
Summary:
- Throw away plans and resolutions!
- Dream big, stay focus!
- On each day, do what matters the most, and don’t mistake this for firefighting.
- Sixty-minute task sprints are better with distraction-free tools
- Fifteen-minute breaks are mandatory
- Reflect and adjust.
- Don’t sweat it. Remember, life should be fun.
I’d love to hear your experiences in doing something similar. Or whether you’ve already tried something similar and learned that this is also an unsustainable way of working.
But if you decided to give this hack a try, have fun.
Oh, and by the way, happy new year!
📝 Read this story later in Journal.
🍎 Wake up every Sunday morning to the week’s most noteworthy stories in Wellness waiting in your inbox. Read the Noteworthy in Wellness newsletter.
