Stovetop cooking and task management
A few months ago, our company reorganized again, and I had a new team member move into my team. We ran through the typical questions I like to ask for our first one-on-one. They’re to build an understanding of who they are, how they prefer to work, and, in this case, what they’re working on. It quickly became apparent that she was overwhelmed and didn’t feel she was doing her best work.
I asked her to ramp me up on what projects she was working on. After we got through the first few, all large projects, and still had four more to go, it was easy to identify the issue. She was trying to do too much all at once.
As a manager, I see how people tackle their work differently. One of the things that I see the most is people trying to take on too much work. It’s easy to take on too much work. I’ve done it too many times. People tend to be pleasers and don’t like to say no. But we all have trouble juggling many projects. There is only so much time in the day. Context switching is a productivity killer. It produces lower-quality work in more extended timelines. Doing good design work needs focus.
The hardest part is figuring out that someone has taken on too much work because it’s not the same for everyone. Some people are better able to hide how much the sheer amount of work impacts their quality of work. Some don’t even know they’re doing it until it’s overwhelming. But once I have an inkling, I bring in stovetop cooking. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: how does cooking relate to design?!? Most people have cooked a big meal, so most folks can relate to it. They know the feeling of juggling a big dinner on the stove or splitting between stove and oven. It’s chaos and stress. Just like that long list of tasks you’ve taken on.
When cooking, I try to keep it to two burners simultaneously. One big burner and one small burner. Keeps things sane. I can keep my eye on each of them and react to them when needed. When adding more burners, I start to overcook or miss steps in a recipe. It ends poorly for me and the meal. So before I start a meal that needs more than a few things done at a time, I plan out what I can do first and what can come second. I break things down and prioritize. I apply this to work, too. You pick one front-burner project, your big meaty project that needs focus and attention. You pick one back burner project that is sorta mindless and can soak up some of your lower energy and brain power time.
I walked through my new report using this method. We identified front-burner and back-burner projects and pushed all the remaining projects out of their mind for now. We’ll get to those once they’ve completed the projects we decided were most important. Their speed and quality picked up immediately.