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The 5 Types of Work That Fill Your Day
Planning Work
Planning work is time spent on listing, prioritizing and scheduling your work.
Planning helps us become efficient in our execution. Thus, allocating special time for planning work is crucial. Proactive planning can be exceptionally productive and beneficial in the long run.
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Reactionary Work
Reactionary work is the stuff that we do out of a reaction, like picking a phone because it is ringing. Checking email, replying to a text message, is all reactionary work. It is a necessary evil.
Reactionary work can be distracting and take up most of our time. Blocking time for certain activities like responding to email or replying to text messages may help.
Planning Work
Planning work is time spent on listing, prioritizing and scheduling your work.
Planning helps us become efficient in our execution. Thus, allocating special time for planning work is crucial. Proactive planning can be exceptionally productive and beneficial in the long run.
Procedural Work
It is the stuff we have to do, like writing a check to pay our bills, preparing our tax returns, or even making a daily report.
Procedural work is best tackled by technology: automation minimizes the time spent and errors generated in any procedural work.
Insecurity Work
Insecurity work is our dip-checks, drills and monitoring the health of our business, making sure everything is normal.
Insecurity work can be compartmentalized into chosen time periods every day, maybe just 30 minutes at the end of each day.
Problem-Solving Work
Our creativity is in its full potential in problem-solving work. This requires our brainpower, focus, and attention.
Fully Engaged Work
Problem-solving work is only possible in a distraction-free zone, away from the ringing phones and notifications.
If the problem you're working on is of genuine interest, then there is real engagement and exceptional results will follow.
Handling Reactionary Work
Reactionary work can be distracting and take up most of our time. Blocking time for certain activities like responding to email or replying to text messages may help.
Remember that reactionary work seems urgent but is not important at that moment.
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There’s no “definitive” system. The best framework is the one that works for you. Ideally, it should model your work style, supporting the way you work. Bonus points if it’s low-maintenance, fast to set up, and adaptable as your work changes.
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Power Up Your Email with Plugins
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Balancing shallow and deep work
- What should be done when your team's "shallow work" is just as important as their "deep work"?
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The Hero Role
- Each month one person on each product team becomes the "Hero." Their primary responsibilities are to communicate with their support team and take care of smaller improvements.
- The Hero should be able to focus entirely on their support duties. They're not assigned to any other product development work during that month.
- Being attentive to the support team and users means the Hero is unlikely to block off 4 hours or more of deep work, but it will enable everyone else on the team to do so.
- Being so close to user's requests and feedback gives the Hero a unique perspective into their problems and struggles.
Housekeeping Days
Each member of the team (except the Hero) spends one day per week on Housekeeping. It gives them time to focus on small but important tasks.
Housekeeping is a personal day. If the Hero hasn't explicitly asked for help on an issue, people can choose which tasks they want to work on. Sometimes this time is used to learn something new related to current or upcoming work.
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