August 10, 2011

productivity – the feel good approach

Execute - The Feel Good Approach to ProductivitySetting Goals, Defining Scope, Estimating and Planning. All of this is worthless if you don’t actually do the work, execute, produce, deliver, ‘ship.’

Productivity. There are libraries full of how to master it and web page after web page explaining how to get some more of it. I have nothing new to add to this conversation, but I will share what works for me.

I find myself jumping between two different mindsets and approaches to productivity: The feel good approach and the hard-ass approach.

It’s a sunny day today and I’m feelin’ good, so I’ll start with the feel good approach. The feel good approach is all about working naturally and realizing that ‘slow and steady wins the race.’ The feel good approach reminds you to (cue Stuart Smalley voice over):

  • Work with your natural rhythm; if you’re most productive in the morning schedule you’re important work then.
  • Don’t overload yourself. Realize what you can realistically accomplish and don’t plan any more.
  • Work on your most important tasks first, if the rest doesn’t get done, come back to it later.
  • Tell yourself you’re just going to work for ten minutes, you’ll usually work longer, but if not that’s okay, too.
  • Remember sometimes you can just get one thing done a day that moves your business forward, and that’s…okay.

Use the feel good approach when your reserves are low and you need to gently prod yourself to your sewing machine, your laptop, or whatever item is the tool of your trade.

Next time we’ll take a look at the hard ass approach, so grab your helmets and strap on your seat belts.

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August 3, 2011

low level planning: a few final points

Planning

Planning

In closing out the section on low level planning, the final few points I’d like to make touch on being specific when calendaring in your activities, making sure to look at your plan every day, creating a plan that allows for flexibility, and setting it up at the beginning of the week.

Be specific - Avoid being vague about what you need to get done when blocking out a task.  If you have three hours planned to do ‘keyword research’ what is that exactly? Brainstorming a list of keywords? Signing up for a word tracker account? Rolling around in the Google Keyword tool for an hour? Describe what it is you need to do in each task in as much detail as makes sense.

Look at your low level plan every day – Even if everything goes out the window, and you can’t do what you planned on doing, it helps to see what you wanted to do. You can always push the work out to another day or pick it up the following week.

Build in flexibility - One of the reasons I like a calendaring tool is that you can create activities as calendar ‘events’ and then move and drag them around to different days on the calendar, so that the work doesn’t get lost. It also makes me feel better if I wasn’t able to get something done, or was in the mood to do something else. I can always swap tasks around. You should also leave as much ‘air’ in your calendar as possible. It’s tempting to cram an activity into every bit of time, but the reality is we aren’t wired to be constantly producing; we need time to recharge.

It’s helpful to remember the expression ‘Life is what Happens while you’re busy making other plans.’

Life does, indeed, happen, and most of it won’t be stuff that you plotted on to your low-level plan, so leave some space for it.

Set it up at the beginning of the week – I find if I don’t do this, my entire week gets messed up because I begin the week feeling like I don’t know what I should be doing and feeling like everything is out of control(!) I try and make a habit of sitting down on Sunday evenings and doing the following to put together my low level plan for the upcoming week:

  • Reviewing my mid-level plan
  • Reviewing what I didn’t get done in the previous week
  • Looking through whatever notes or to-do’s I’ve jotted down
  • Talking to my husband about our social calendar for the upcoming week
  • Getting all cranky pants because there just isn’t enough &%*$& time
  • Accepting that it is saner to plan for half of the things I want to do, and that I will most likely only get half of that done!

Which reminds me, it might be a good idea to baseline in some daily meditation…

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July 13, 2011

Down in the Weeds – Low Level Planning

An Example Low Level Plan

An Example Low Level Plan

Low level planning is your day-to-day work planned out at the granular level, usually by the week, with activities blocked out by the hour. This is the plan that I find most important when it comes to really getting down to brass tacks and working.

A low level plan is where the rubber hits the road in terms of seeing what you have to do this week, today, right now – and doing it.

The example above illustrates one way a low level might be laid out. It illustrates the more granular break down of activities related to the original project item ‘Optimize the content on your site for related keywords and better Google rankings’ we identified in the scope definition process. This project was broken into subsequent activities, including ‘Keyword Research’ in the high level plan and ‘Buy and Read SEO Book’ and ‘Research SEO on web’ in the mid level pContinue Reading

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July 6, 2011

A Little Closer In – Mid Level Planning

Mid Level Plan


High, Mid and Low Level planning are similar to breaking down scope, in that you start big and then narrow down into more detail. In planning this is done with both scope and time.

Mid-Level planning can be done at the quarterly level or the monthly level.

I personally prefer the monthly level, mostly because planning at a monthly level feels natural and works well with our modern Gregorian calendar-influenced rhythms.

Two key considerations when creating a mid-level plan are more detailed estimates and dependencies.

Your estimates don’t have to be super accurate, but a little bit more than ‘back of the napkin’ is helpful. You’ll need to plan out your tasks and projects at the next level of detail than you did in high-level planning to help identify dependencies.

A ‘dependency’ is a component of a project that has to be finished before the next step can be taken. For example, in the mid level plan shown here, the high level plan item ‘keyword research’ breaks down into several discrete activities, with each one being ‘dependent’ on the one that came before it.

A mid-level plan needs to consider dependencies and chronologically order activities accordingly.

Understanding dependencies can be self-evident when you are working on your own. It’s a bit trickier and more important when you are working with others, or have people working for you. If you are dependent on outsourcing certain aspects of production, for example, you want to plan and schedule work so that you aren’t ‘blocked’ or ‘gated’ (to use project management jargon) from completing dependent work if it doesn’t get done.

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June 29, 2011

A Helicopter View – High Level Planning

High Level Plan Example

Example of a High Level Plan

Planning is the combination of goals, scope, and estimates all plotted along a time line. A high level plan is this combination at its most elemental, and provides a ‘helicopter view’ of what you’ll be doing for the next year (or three, or five.)

At it’s simplest, a high level plan is a collection of milestones.

‘Milestones’ is a standard part of project management jargon. The original meaning of the term is for a series of markers along a path. Milestones in project management, appropriately, refer to major achievements along the path leading to a pre-defined goal. For example, a milestone can be the completion of a project, or ‘shipping’ a product.

The difference between creating a high level plan and creating a list of goals is that on a high level plan, you jot down the projects that will contribute to accomplishing your goals.

This is where you start putting your scope and estimates to work.

Let’s go back to our earlier example of a jewelry business wanting to increase online sales by 30%. The projects (scope) defined to accomplish this goal were:

  • Open a storefront on an additional online marketplace
  • Write a monthly post on your blog about jewelry care
  • Optimize the content on your site for related keywords and better Google rankings

The high level plan above shows milestones associated with the projects listed above, as well as very broad ‘ball park’ estimates, plotted along time. What you don’t see are any detailed activities, additional day-to-day or fulfillment work, etc. The high level plan just has the basics.

Use whatever tool makes sense for you; spreadsheets, online calendar tools, post-its – whatever. The main thing is to review it at least four times a year, and make sure it stays current.

I make an initial high level plan on a spreadsheet and then print it out. When I review it, I refer to the paper version, where I write notes and cross things out. If it gets too messy I’ll update the digital version and print it out again, but I avoid getting hung up on the administration of perfect ‘digital artifacts.’

A high level plan is incredibly useful during those times where you are down in the weeds of your work, feeling discouraged or a little overwhelmed by what you are trying to do. You can whip out your plan and, like a map, it helps you get re-oriented on your path.

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