Productivity

The 4 Day Work Week?

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I’m going to put my geek job guru hat on for this column and discuss the idea of the four-day workweek. I’m sure we’ve all heard about Iceland’s experiments in such an arrangement. I want to go into how it’s possible to do so with little interruption – but there’s something else to address first.

Namely, a lot of current working arrangements are awful. People are underpaid, abused, work in bad conditions, etc. We must fix these things, and we must have a robust social safety net. Also, a four-day workweek would be good for mental health, period.

With that out of the way, let me explain why I think a four-day workweek is possible for many jobs. I believe that people can be just as productive, with some exceptions. I also don’t care about the exceptions because I think a four-day workweek is a good idea.

But, anyway, a four-day workweek is possible because many businesses and organizations burn a lot of time on useless stuff. Imagine if organizations worked to do things better and that saved time meant less time on the job?

FIXING MISTAKES IS A PART OF TOO MANY JOBS: And I’m not talking QA or editing, but fixing mistakes that should be rare. People burn cycles going over poorly filled-out forms, bridging gaps that shouldn’t exist, and so on. Ever know someone whose job boils down to “talk to people who don’t talk to anyone else?”

TOO MANY BUSINESS PROCESSES ARE TERRIBLE: The reason so much goes wrong is many business processes are awful. Endless forms with no guiding documents and poorly implemented reports suck up time. Many people waste time doing things that don’t work very well as no one wants to fix them.

MEETINGS: Somehow, in the last two decades, meetings got even further out of control. I suspect technology has made it even easier to schedule time-wasters – meetings with no point or where only a few people are needed. What if we, you know, had less?

USELESS TOOLS:  I remember being excited about business tools – programs, spreadsheets, etc. However, they may not solve problems and can even create more if they’re not the right ones. How many times did you give up on something and use Excel (the duct tape of tools).

NO IMPROVEMENT: Agile has taught me how to focus on improvement. However, a lot of businesses don’t seem to want to improve by, you know, improving. THere’s not much bottom-up feedback (like Agile) but plenty of consultants ready to take your money. In the end, it seems not enough changes anyway.

LACK OF TRANSPARENCY: I have heard this since . . . forever. It’s hard to know what’s going on in any large organization. This may not be nefarious – sometimes miscommunication happens. But when you don’t know what’s going on, you can’t plan.

BURNOUT:  All of the above leads to more people burning out. Burnout leads to failure, resignation, inefficiency, etc. If you had fewer of these problems, you’d have less burnout. Burnout makes bad things worse.

I firmly believe if organizations committed to a four-day workweek, many could make it happen by making things run better.

For fun, spend a week or two and ask yourself what tasks could be more efficient – or removed altogether. The answer . . . well, it won’t surprise you.

Steven Savage

The Ability To Know The End

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

While editing “A School of Many Futures” last night, I realized I could see the end in sight. For a minute, the world froze as I knew the book would be done. It’s strange to have the bolt of inspiration not be “the start” but “oh, good, this’ll be done.”

Sometimes it seemed I wouldn’t complete it – and the Pandemic didn’t help. I had written the book, rewritten it, had it edited, rewrote it during editing, edited it, and took prereader input. It seemed like it’d be forever, even as time ticked down on my well-constructed timeline.

This lightning bolt of understanding led me to another realization – the ability to know something is done is a skill.

I work in the software industry, where many people advocate for a “Definition of Done” for parts of projects. The idea is that you should know what means a program, update, etc. is ready to go. After all, if you don’t know what “done” is, when do you stop?

(I’m sure that sounds familiar to many writers and artists.)

I know people who are just good at done. They can assess end states, itemize needs, and figure out where you need to go. I’m sure you have something you’re good at where you can know done. That skill might not exist in every part of your life.

In the case of my novel, between the Pandemic and challenging myself, I hadn’t asked what “Done” was. In fact, I hadn’t done it for my first novel as well. Clearly, this was a skill I could develop.

I don’t have this problem with my nonfiction work. Perhaps I find such ease because it’s very technical, or that fiction has much more potential. Perhaps my return to fiction is showing gaps in my knowledge. Either way, I’ve found a skill to build.

Perhaps I can start by creating Definitions of Done for my work.

How good are you at figuring out “done?”

Steven Savage

Draw The Line On Deadlines

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

When I meet with writers, “Deadlines” are in the top ten topics of discussion. Who has one, who missed one, who needs one, why we have them this time.  When we have to be done takes up a lot of space in the minds of writers.

I realized this Dominance of the Deadline odd as it’s not directly about writing.

As I talk with my fellow writers, the stress of deadlines comes up all the time. An editor may inflict a deadline, an author may choose one, but most writers worry about them. While wrestling with this worry, I noticed how much fear of deadlines slows writing.

You can’t write well when you’re panicked.

Now, let me voice a blasphemy – Deadlines can be a bad idea for some writers or some projects.

A shocking statement, but let me turn (inevitably) to Agile approaches. Agile teaches us to evaluate the value of things – a project, a task, a tool. You should ask if a deadline you have brings any value – it may not.

A deadline may be very valuable. For example, if you’re trying to meet an ideal release date for a marketing campaign, the deadline matters.  But you may need to give up on other things of lesser value. If one book needs to hit a deadline, set aside that side project or drop that indulgent appendix.

A deadline may be valuable but not critical.  A deadline could be helpful but not vital – meaning maybe you don’t take it as seriously. If you want to get a book done by a given month to start another, well, a slight change won’t matter. As important as a deadline is, maybe quality or free time matter more.

A deadline may be a bad idea.  Hersey? Perhaps, but maybe some of your deadlines do nothing but cause pain. Maybe you drop a deadline on a “for fun” project or acknowledge the unknown. Hey, you can always add a deadline later.

A deadline is a choice, even if your choice is “I’m gonna fail to deliver this book.

I would also add we often use deadlines as substitutes for other things. We use a deadline to force discipline, but maybe a daily writing exercise is better for us. A deadline may help us hit an ideal time for marketing – but perhaps a different advertising campaign is a better idea.

Evaluate the value of your deadlines as a writer – and as a person. I’d suggest you do it soon, but only if that deadline is valuable.

Steven Savage