“A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.” — Charles Kettering
If there’s one thing that strikes me the most about my productivity recently, it has had to do with defining the task at hand.
I’d make a general plan for the day and timebox the tasks too. However, at some point after I’d start working on the task, I’d go off on a tangent and eventually completely derail from my plan.
I was disappointed with myself.
Despite making progress on one front, there were other tasks that I could not finish which could have easily been completed if I was more judicious with how I approached my work.
The solution was to clearly define the task at hand.
That meant the following:
- To break the task down to workable pieces.
- To identify precisely what needs to be done.
- Who else could do it or needs to be contacted for more information.
- How to complete the subtasks?
- In which order do the subtasks need to be done?
- Why do certain subtasks need to be done or why not?
- Where can the work be done?
Some days this process took me a good 30 minutes before I even started to work on any tasks. But it was downright worth it because
I knew exactly what I had to work on.
I could estimate the time to work on the tasks better. Which meant that I could plan my day better. That meant that I could actually follow through on my plan. This aligns well with what researchers from the University of London’s Interaction Center found in their study “Disengaged From Planning During the Lockdown? An Interview Study in an Academic Setting”. In fact, breaking down tasks was found to be one of the most popular strategies adopted by the study participants. One of the participants even said the following:
“One thing I changed recently is that I was setting even smaller tasks for each day. That really helped, it can teach you how much to allocate for tasks in the future and how much work you can get done in a day.”
Having said that, I admit that I still fell prey to an overestimation bias of roughly 15-20%, i.e., I had 15-20% of my planned tasks unfinished at the end of my day. But that was not as disappointing as before as I could focus on getting things done in the limited time I have as a dad of two kids. I end my day feeling successful this way!
Here are a few more questions I’ve found effective at clarifying the problem and breaking it down.
- What am I going to do next?
- How am I going to do it?
- Why am I doing it?
- For how long am I going to do it?
- Is this really essential?
If you tried this out or have thoughts on this, leave me a comment or send me a message. I’m curious to know your perspective and experience.
If you want to learn more about concrete planning & reflection strategies I’ve outlined specific steps to plan your day, week and month and questions to ask yourself on a daily, weekly and monthly basis in my eBook “The 3 Pillars To Transformative Productivity & Well-Being“.
Reference: Ahmetoglu, Yoana, Duncan P. Brumby, and Anna L. Cox. “Disengaged from planning during the lockdown? an interview study in an academic setting.” IEEE Pervasive Computing 20.4 (2021): 18-25.