10: Dim and dimmer
Throughout these emails, I’ve been touting the intentional design of work. My belief being that by improving the environment within which people operate, we’ll not only contribute to a more consistent approach to performance improvement, but we’ll also pave the way for effective AI integration. Thus becoming indispensable in the process.
But I’d like to start getting closer to what I mean when I say ‘designing work’.
So, where to start?
Well, maybe at the beginning…
I’ve always struggled with waste. Listening to the teacher drone on about algae when I could be playing football. Watching documentaries about World War II and trying to comprehend the scale of human loss. Throwing away a coffee cup that’s only been used once.
I’m not sure why this bothers me so much, but I think it comes down to unrealised potential - what could humanity achieve if we didn’t waste so much time and resource?
And that’s probably what turned me into a productivity nerd. Yep, I’m the guy with remote-controlled switches on all the lamps in the house, so he can activate ‘mood lighting’ at the touch of a button.
At work, this translated into a fascination with how I work. Looking for opportunities to improve my process, so I had more time to fulfil my potential.
In my twenties, I read Getting Things Done by David Allen. It’s an excellent productivity book, which introduced me to systems thinking.
I still use many of the ideas today, including:
Capture. Unless it can be done in two minutes, when you create/receive an input (idea, to-do, email, notes, letter) capture it into a single inbox, ready to process later.
Process. Do one of four things with each item when you process your inbox - do (if it takes less than two minutes), delay (put it into your calendar or to-do list to action later), delegate, or delete.
Inbox Zero. Never keep emails in your inbox. Process them as per the above rules and then archive the email.
I tried to integrate these principles into several digital productivity tools (the book was written in the analogue era).
One of the first I made progress with was Evernote. Upon first inspection, it seemed flexible enough to allow me to customise its setup and incorporate some of the systems thinking principles I was learning about. I created a new notebook, added my tasks and assigned some tags - the intent being to only see tasks at the moment I needed them.
What I was trying to build was a ‘satnav for work’ - a dynamic dashboard that constantly guided me on what to do next.
And whilst it kinda worked, there were a couple of problems.
First, the only way to add dates was with reminders. This wasn’t ideal, because a reminder is like an alarm clock. It interrupts you at a specific moment. But I didn’t want an alarm clock. I wanted a daily agenda showing me what to do next.
Second, the only way to filter tasks was with tags. I had created tags for:
Status: Active, Waiting, Someday
Priority: High, Medium, Low
Location: Office, Home, Shops
Project: Project X, Project Y, Project Z
Person: Ant, Wife, Manager, Debbie in accounts
But Evernote had a single, flat tagging structure - meaning these seventeen tags were mixed up together! I.e., I couldn’t sort or filter by Priority or Project.
Very quickly, it all turned into a hot mess.
To be fair, Evernote was never designed as a task manager. But because of the lack of an alternative - and boy did I search - I had to settle for this Frankensteined excuse for a task dashboard.
And so, I toiled away, spending more time maintaining the system than doing the work. Which totally defeated the purpose…
I should mention, throughout all this, I hadn’t made a connection between this productivity experiment and my role as an instructional designer. After all, at that point in my career, I thought my job was to create jazzy-looking training - I hadn’t grasped I was responsible for employee performance.
But looking back, it’s clear this was my first foray into work design - I was trying to design an environment that would improve my own performance.
And I was failing!
But then, I stumbled across something that shook my world…
Yours,
- Ant
