One thing that you cannot escape is that the productivity system that is going to work for you, will depend heavily on what your work actually is. Life isn’t just about work and so we could also throw in the general circumstances of life to this. When you consider all of your different responsibilities across every area of life, then what you need in order to manage all of this ‘stuff’ is going to look different, don’t you think? So, an important thing for us all to do is to consider your core work and the impact on your productivity system.
Identifying your core work
This can actually be the hardest part, though for some roles it can be quite easy. Carl Pullein often picks the example of the sales person for an illustration of this. Or perhaps a teacher. For these roles, the name says it all. If you are a sales person, your core work is to sell. If you are a teacher, then it is to teach. Though, I sometimes wonder if this is overly simplistic. Take the example of the teacher. You could very easily argue that the core work of the the teacher only happens when they are stood in front of the class and teaching. But equally, you could say that lesson planning and preparation are a key part of this. You could also make the point that marking your students work is where you learn how they are getting on and is the only thing that gives you data on how to focus your teaching in future.
For other types of roles, the exercise can be a bit more complicated. Most of my jobs have been general, catch all, administrative roles within Christian charities. These often don’t come with clear definitions. It is more that your job’s purpose is to manage all the administration and ensure it is all kept on top of. I was once described as being like the liver of the the church! My role was to deal with all the bad stuff that could potentially harm the church. Not a good illustration!
How to know what’s what
So, what is your core work? I have a few examples of questions to ask to identify this. Is there anything that you are responsible for that no-one else is? Anything you do that no-one else does? Of all of the responsibilities that you have, in your specific role right now, which do you consider to be the most important?
It’s worth saying that this will not always be the things your boss is most vocal about. It does depend on your role. Often the things your bosses and colleagues are the most vocal about is the different things you do that support them in their core work. There might be core things that you do, that they aren’t really all that involved with. It is your job after all, not theirs!
So, if you are unclear what your core work is, it is worth sitting down for half an hour and thinking this through.
Identifying your key roles and responsibilities
The same is true for the whole of our lives. This is a slightly easier exercise. This involves evaluating our life situation as it currently is and working out what areas of responsibility we have and how best to discharge them. This will involve the relationships we have and the circumstances around them. For example, the responsibility of being a child will be different if you are 25 and your parents are still working, to if you are much older and your parents are unwell.
So, what are your key roles and responsibilities in life? What matters to you as the person you are in the position you find yourself in?
Your core work and the impact on your productivity system
It should be fairly obvious at this point the type of work you do and the responsibilities that you have, is going to have a huge impact on the system that is going to work for you. Let me give you three examples from my own past experience.
The repetitive process job
Once, I worked for an energy supplier. My whole job was to look at electricity meter readings that had been failed by the system. I had to examine the reason why they had failed and decide if I could manually accept the reading into the system. That was it.
I would be given a spreadsheet that was tens of thousands of lines long and allocated sections to work through each day. You could do around 500-750 in a day. This kind of work requires little to no time management or productivity system. The best idea would be to employ some version of the pomodoro system to work intensively in bursts and then take short breaks from the spreadsheet to look at any emails (which there were not many of!) or go for 5 minute walk around the building. I had no projects and didn’t really have any ‘tasks’ to manage. Just me, the spreadsheet and time.
The Church-based ministry job
After this I was a ministry trainee at my local church. My time largely split into 4 areas. Meeting people, study and preparation, admin and practical tasks. The meetings would be meetings at church, staff meetings and meetings I organised with members of the congregation. The preparation I had to do was mostly the same every week with normally something extra a couple of times a quarter. These were normally bigger tasks to complete that would each take 3-4 hours, for example preparing a Bible Study. The admin and practical tasks were often quite repetitive as well, processes to follow and the like.
With so many meetings happening at consistent times each week and with several, larger prep tasks again consistently required each week, it made sense to focus all my productivity efforts on managing my calendar. I would plan in the slots for meetings, plan in the slots I allocated to study and prep and then plan in when I would do my admin and practical work. I kept a handwritten to-do list for the week of all the different tasks and when it came to my admin and practical time slots, the list was there to tell me what to do. A more calendar and time blocking approach will serve you well in this context.
The Administrative Oversight job
In more recent times I have been in Administrative oversight of Churches and charities. This is a whole different ball game. I have a lot more tasks to keep track of, many of which cannot be done until months in the future. I have several different areas that I am responsible for managing and keeping ticking over as well as a handful of projects that I need to complete at any given time.
Critically, in these situations I have not had anyone keeping track of what I need to be doing and telling me what work I should be doing. Not generally anyway. It is my responsibility to know what needs to be done, and make sure it gets done. A large proportion of the tasks I have are actually quite small and do not take a great deal of time each – time blocking these would be stupid. So, I tend to use more of a list based approach where my tasks and projects are categorised by the different areas of responsibility I have and also loosely organised by the different time sector slots I plan to do them in. This works really well for keeping on top of great many things, now, from week to week and looking into the future as well. At least, it has so far.
Choose the system to match your work
So you see, the work you do will greatly impact the system that is going to work for you. If you try to adopt a productivity system that does not match your type of work and roles, you are going to find it fails pretty quickly. So, it really does pay to spend some time analysing the work you do. Analyse the different roles that you have. Only then can you identify your core work and the impact on your productivity system. Only then you devise a system that is well suited to you, your work and your life.
