Optics-driven Task Management

Are you moving the ball forward? And do they know it?

Author

Bruno Nogueira
June 08, 2023

It seems every few weeks, a new "productivity guru" comes up with a new system that promises to triple your productivity:

  • Inbox zero

  • GTD (Getting Things Done)

  • The Moscow Method

  • Bullet Journalling

  • Time-blocking your calendar

  • The Pomodoro Technique

They all have two things in common:

Thing #1) About 5-10% of people who try it are completely transformed and turn into internet zealots of this new method (while the other 95% move on to the next big thing).

Thing #2) They were all created by people whose job is to write books and create internet content, and thus, have no boss.

This is not to say they don't work… If you find it hard to keep organized and be productive, I highly recommend you try out a few systems and see if anyone turns your life around.

But still, the "they have no boss" part of the problem is never addressed.

Hence why I love this tip from fellow reader Ankit, which I called "Optics-driven Task Management":

There are always things to do on our list that are of varying priorities, and we all tend to do them either in priority or chronological order.

But one of my ex-Managers once gave me a useful tip that works for me even till today.

When you have a list of tasks, there will always be difficult tasks that take hours to do (e.g. building a mini model to solve a new problem, drafting the executive summary), but also some easy ones that take just a few minutes (e.g. fixing some typos, updating a chart, sending one email, etc).

If these easy ones are buried deeper below more complex higher priority tasks, you never get to them till very late in the day.

If in the middle of the day, your Manager asks you for a check-in, all you would show is you are still working on task number 2, which will require another 3 hours, before you get to the 5 other easy ones.

The perception of the manager is you have done only one task in half a day.

Instead, if you pull out the easy ones from the list and get them out of the way in the first hour and then do the complex tasks, in your mid-day check-in you can demonstrate a lot of progress which is much better received.

Here the optics is important, plus you have a chance that your manager, who is impressed by now, might show you some tricks to complete your complex task quickly, hence saving time.

Every day, this is what I always try to do, I list my todos, complete the easy ones first quickly, and then I can spend my energy and time on the complex tasks.

Obviously, judgement is very important here in deciding what makes sense to do first.

If the easy task is only marginally easier but has much lower priority, then doing it later is better. In other words, complexity of the tasks should be taken into account when deciding on the order of working through them.

When you're working on your own, perhaps the only driver to care about in terms of productivity is how productive you are.

But when you have a boss with the power to fire you (and promote you / give you a raise), there's another hidden metric: how others feel how productive you are.

Managers can't measure your productivity directly, so they have to rely on heuristics, the simplest and most common one being:

"Are they moving the ball forward?"

That's why this simple tweak in the order of your tasks can make a difference for you…

You'll be perceived as the type of person that works fast, and you might even get a whole peaceful afternoon to work on your "deep work" activities.

By the way, this is not even a "productivity system".

You can tweak whatever system you're using to incorporate this principle… And even choose when you want to do this or not.

Keep working smarter.