The idea of focusing on the final product is critical to efficiently completing your high-priority projects, which often are broad in scope and complex in content. The key word here is “tentative”–you should stop midway to reassess the final product in light of what you’ve learned so far. However, to apply this idea to your high-priority projects, you’ll probably have to overcome two constraints: your own tendency to procrastinate and your organization’s emphasis on hours worked.
Start at the End
Think hard at the start of a project about where it’s going: what are the critical issues, and how are they likely to be resolved? After a day or so of gathering relevant information, write down your tentative conclusions for the project. These will allows you to more quickly engage in analysis–rather than description–by providing a focus for your subsequent research.Write the conclusions in the form of a rebuttable hypothesis that can be revised as the project progresses. You might even have to scrap your conclusions completely as you learn new facts. That’s fine. This approach is similar to the scientific method: you generate a set of hypotheses; then you test them out, not the other way around.
The Midflight Check
Though you should start by generating tentative conclusions, you should give them another look midway through the project–and make revisions in light of what you’ve learned so far. In other words, you need to start with rebuttable hypotheses to guide your research, but you should not wait until the end to evaluate them. By pausing and reflecting midway through the project, you will be able to focus the second half of your work on a better set of hypotheses.
Stop Procrastinating Today!
- Some projects may be difficult to start because their size and complexity seem overwhelming. To counteract this feeling, breaking the project into smaller pieces and get going on the first steps. Once you get started, it is easier to continue.
- If you are easily distracted and constantly find other things to do, you’ll have to be merciless in controlling your work environment. Clear your docket, set aside time to concentrate on the big project, and cut off access to distractions such as social networking websites and video games.
- If you are a severe procrastinator, you may suffer from a deep-seated fear of failure; you may not believe that the final product will be any good. If you think this may be a factor in your tendency to procrastinate, Pozen strongly recommends seeking the help of a psychotherapist who can help you deal with this fear.
No matter what type of procrastinator you are, you can help yourself by creating evenly spaced, minideadlines–interim dates for completing specific stages of the project. In other words, if you can’t work without a deadline, create more deadlines.
Takeaways
1. Focus on achieving the best results, not spending the highest number of hours at work.
2. Write out the tentative conclusions of a complex problem before gathering too much data. This will focus your research.
3. Formulate your conclusions in the form of rebuttable hypotheses, which can be changed by evidence and new insights.
4. Stop midway through any project to revise your methods and conclusions in light of what you’ve learned so far.
5. If a project involves teams from multiple parts of a large organization, use the midflight check as a chance for all teams to share their intermediate results and coordinate approaches.
6. To help you get started, reward yourself when you complete a task–say, with ice cream or a TV show.
7. Set minideadlines before the actual deadline if you find yourself unable to get started. If necessary, make the minideadlines official by submitting them to your boss.
8. If you’re a professional whose work is charged by the billable hour–or if you’re a client of such a firm–encourage the firm’s partners to reform their billing systems to better reflect value produced rather than hours logged.
9. Don’t assume that your colleagues’ productivity can be measured by the number of hours they spend at work.
10. Don’t support the office culture of “face time”; avoid snide comments when someone leaves early or arrives late.
* Source: Extreme Productivity by Robert C. Pozen