Making Hay
External events have meant I haven’t had time to update this blog recently. Which is a rather embarrassing failure of my own productivity systems. I had - still have - many ideas and draft articles for this blog, unfortunately none were in a suitably complete state to post. Lesson learned: in future I’ll try to make sure I have not only draft entries but also completed ones that simply require posting.
There’s also a wider point here: compensate for future situational volatility by optimising temporal resource allocation.
Which is management-speak gobbledygook for: “Make hay while the sun shines”.
Many workers in traditional day jobs are highly inefficient. Not through any fault of their own but through systems that force them to do certain things at certain times - even if that isn’t the optimal use of that time. So periods of creativity are interrupted by deaing with trivial telephone calls and stifling meetings. Brainstorming sessions are called at a time when many of the participants are still half asleep. Detailed jobs requiring concentration are scheduled for the post-lunch dip.
And - of particular relevance here - people aren’t given the time to prepare in advance for unexpected events. Many companies spend a fortune on business continuity planning yet don’t allow individuals the flexibility to have their own contingency plans in place (building a slippage element into the project Gantt chart is not the same thing!).
No wonder people aren’t productive and are caught out by unexpected events. In an ideal world people would optimise their time - and hence their productivity - according to their energy levels, existing commitments, contingency cushion etc. Unfortunately few people are taught how to do this - and fewer still are allowed the freedom to do so. Too many middle managers still consider a good employee to be one who’s simply in the right place at the right time.
For those of us who are self employed we at least have more control over our time. We need to learn to balance the importance of scheduling and meeting deadlines with an ability to realise which tasks we can do best at a particular time. Sometimes the best thing we can do for our long term efficiency is to take a short break rather than slogging on doing work we’ll only have to go back and correct tomorrow.
We need to make hay when the sun shines, collect drinking water during the rain and use the snow to chill our margarita!
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