One of the most effective ways to get more done is to find and
eliminate productivity bottlenecks. What do I mean by bottlenecks?
These are simply the limiting steps in a process. If it takes you ten
minutes to drive to your office, but an hour to find parking, then
finding parking is a bottleneck in trying to get to work.
Bottlenecks
destroy your productivity and they might be hiding in your schedule
without you realizing it.
Why is Eliminating Bottlenecks Critical?
Bottlenecks are the perfect example of a small change that can have a
huge impact on your productivity. If an activity takes four hours, but
three and a half are spent on just one step, speeding up that step
could make you 7-8x more productive. If something that normally takes an
entire day could be finished in an hour, wouldn’t you want to know how?
What Causes Productivity Bottlenecks?
There are a lot of ways you can get caught in a bottleneck. Here are just a few of the possible causes:
Working in a Team. Waiting on team members to finish work can bring a project to a crawl. If a key member isn’t moving fast enough, the whole team might get stuck.
Working in a Team. Waiting on team members to finish work can bring a project to a crawl. If a key member isn’t moving fast enough, the whole team might get stuck.
Difficult Tasks. Hard tasks can slow down your
schedule, even if they don’t need a lot of time. It might take you
weeks to brainstorm the perfect topic for a paper, even if it only takes
a day or two to write.
Unpleasant Tasks. Anything you procrastinate on
regularly can become a bottleneck. If you don’t enjoy doing something,
you’ll probably waste time getting started.
Perfectionism. Being unable to say “good enough”
can stall a project. Doing a good job is important, but constant
tweaking wastes time if it isn’t necessary.
Waiting for Information. I’m sure we all know the
person who takes a week to respond to a simple email. Waiting for info
can become a bottleneck that’s difficult to avoid.
Bottlenecks tend to fall into two categories, those caused by other
people and the ones you get caught in yourself. Completely avoiding
bottlenecks isn’t always possible, sometimes they catch you by surprise.
But you should be able to spot the bottlenecks on in any activity you
repeat regularly.
How to Find Hidden Bottlenecks in Your Schedule
Where can you find these bottlenecks that are zapping your time and
energy? There are a couple ways you can look for them. My biggest
suggestion is to start by doing a timelog. A timelog is simply a
recording of the time spent on every activity you do each day. Getting
actual numbers can help you pinpoint where time is flowing out of your
day.
Once you’ve done a timelog, there are a few places you can start looking:
Where do you procrastinate? If you procrastinate on
a particular task frequently, it will probably become a bottleneck.
Creating a strategy to beat your procrastination on this one task could
save you a lot of lost time.
Where are your creative blocks? If you have a
creative job, you might spend a lot of time trying to come up with ideas
or solve difficult problems. These creative blocks can become
bottlenecks, slowing down any progress you can make.
What is the least energy-consuming step? If an
activity takes a long time, but doesn’t require a lot of thinking, you
can probably find a way to avoid it. For computer-related tasks, look
for software that might automate the step. For other tasks, you might
want to outsource the job to someone else.
Where do you rely on other people? Almost any group
work that requires input from someone else before it can move forward is
a potential bottleneck. While you have less control over these
bottlenecks, you can still find ways to speed them through.
Eliminating Bottlenecks
How do you get rid of bottlenecks? I’ve found doing a brainstorm with
the specific task is enough to come up with ways to eliminate them.
When I realized that idea-generation was a bottleneck for my writing, I
decided to split off the step to a separate brainstorming phase. As a
result, I saved a few hours each week.
Each bottleneck might require a different strategy, but here are a few general solutions that can speed up these limiting steps:
Automate. If a task takes a long time, but isn’t
intellectually stimulating, there is probably a way to automate it.
Software solutions can automate a lot of the grunt work if you know how
to find it. Outsourcing to a virtual assistant or hiring a specialist
can also save time.
Build Momentum Through Procrastination Spots. If you
have a task you tend to procrastinate on, give it more focus in your
to-do list. Try to schedule it for when you’ll have the most energy so
you won’t put it off.
Communicate Early. When you make a request, ask the
person what their expectation is for a due date. Then double that
number. That’s a realistic estimate for how long it should take to get
the work in.
Communicate early and communicate often to make sure your
request doesn’t get buried.
Split Up Creative Tasks. All ideas come from two
phases, an idea-generation phase and a refining phase. If you try to do
both at the same time you get writer’s block (or programmer’s block,
artist’s block, engineer’s block…). Split the two into separate steps so
you can collect a lot of raw idea material before trying to tweak them
into something usable.
0 Comments: