Bolg - The Chris Blanc Weblog

Many managers observe that some tasks happen quickly and effectively, while others (usually the least exciting) drag on into infinity. What’s most interesting is that these tasks are approached different ways, and that can make a huge difference in what work needs to be done. If there are 100 tasks needed to be done on a project, but ten of those tasks constitute 90% of its functionality, tackling those ten in a dynamic matter might liberate the rest to be done later or make them easier, since the framework will already be built.

Numerous studies have found 10:1 differences in productivity and quality among individuals and even among teams. The original study that found huge variations in individual programming productivity was conducted in the late 1960s by Sackman, Erikson, and Grant. They studied professional programmers with an average of 7 years’ experience and found that the ratio of initial coding time between the best and worst programmers was about 20 to 1; the ratio of debugging times over 25 to 1; of program size 5 to 1; and of program execution speed about 10 to 1. They found no relationship between a programmer’s amount of experience and code quality or productivity. ^{^}

It’s not just programming: the best workers in all fields know how to separate the consequential from the inconsequential.

Q: Do workaholics accomplish more than people who work fewer hours?

A: Often, they don’t. That is because, as perfectionists, they may become so fixated on inconsequential details that they find it hard to move on to the next task, [Psychiatrist Bryan] Robinson said.

As Gayle Porter [a professor who has studied workaholism] put it: “They’re not looking for ways to be more efficient; they’re just looking for ways to always have more work to do.

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The person may look like a hero, coming in to solve crisis after crisis, when in fact the crises could have been avoided. Sometimes, the workaholic may have unwittingly created the problems to provide the endless thrill of more work. ^{^}

The management science involved is knowing the design of the task you’re attempting to accomplish, and finding core tasks that are necessary, then postponing others so they don’t get in the way. This keeps people from inventing work, or from getting stalled on relatively inconsequential tasks when bigger tasks need doing.

Another view of the same:

Sarah and I just got back from a talk at Haas about “deliberate practice” as it relates to excellence. The idea is that how good (or expert) you become at a skill has a lot more to do with how you go about doing your work than it has to do with merely performing the skill a large number of times or over a long length of time.

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This all reminds me of an old study of what differentiated classes of swimmers, The Mundanity of Excellence (it seems to be readable through Google book search). The researchers found that swimmers who moved up in class did it almost entirely by how they went about performing their practice. It was the quality of their work, not the quantity of their work that mattered. Moving up in class could be as simple as changing the way you cupped your hand during your swim stroke, as long as you were willing to practice that improved stroke during every lap of every practice. ^{^}

And still another take from one of the great success stories of the last century:

But if Toyota doesn’t look like an innovative company it’s only because our definition of innovation — cool new products and technological breakthroughs, by Steve Jobs-like visionaries — is far too narrow. Toyota’s innovations, by contrast, have focussed on process rather than on product, on the factory floor rather than on the showroom. That has made those innovations hard to see. But it hasn’t made them any less powerful.

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So how has Toyota stayed ahead of the pack?

The answer has a lot to do with another distinctive element of Toyota’s approach: defining innovation as an incremental process, in which the goal is not to make huge, sudden leaps but, rather, to make things better on a daily basis. (The principle is often known by its Japanese name, kaizen — continuous improvement.) ^{^}

Clearly defining important tasks, focusing on what they are as actions and goals, and then streamlining to make those goals occur more reliably and efficiently is a cornerstone of good management. This applies whether you’re talking about programming, dog walking, rocket science or impressionistic painting. It’s good discipline — good psychology — for succeeding at anything. The core of it is filtering the fringe tasks from the core.

And then there’s this 1994 book: Office Biology or Why Tuesday Is Your Most Productive Day and Other Relevant Facts for Survival in the Workplace. There is a whole book about how Tuesdays are so productive. How could I have missed this incredibly important fact for all these years? ^{^}

It’s not that Tuesdays are magic, but the position Tuesday holds in the week. Monday is getting re-acquainted with what will get done that week, and getting a huge list of tasks as everyone meets. Tuesday is when you cut that list down to what can be reasonably accomplished and pick the most important parts.

Again, it’s defining task, by what is most important, in order to stay on task.