agile life

My Agile Life: Multitasking. Sort Of.

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

More on my use of “Agile” and Scrum in my life!

Agile methods tend to discourage multitasking as well as having a lot on your plate.  The goal is to avoid distractions (with less multitasking) and avoid having a lot on your mind (by limiting work in progress).  Of course, as we always get interrupted, we tend to multitask a bit.  Sometime things almost have to be done together or require such long delays (like a chat) that multitasking is almost needed.

Let me note that I do think you should avoid multitasking.  I do believe in limiting work in progress.  But there are times multitasking is fine or even good.

What I’ve found that in my own life, what helps is to identify what you can do while doing other things.  Preemptive multitasking as it were.

You know what I mean:

  • You’d like to watch some tv, but friends want to chat online – you can do both.
  • You’d like to come up with a shopping list which you can do while watching tv as it’s not a rush.
  • You want to do some online research, so you do it while chatting or on the phone – heck, the other person may have ideas.
  • And so on . . .

You’ll note a lot of this is recreational/social.  This is where I often multitask when doing things that are “gruntwork-like.” Not something requiring intense effort, nor intense focus, but things that have a lot of “bite sized” tasks so I can watch TV or chat to take the edge off.  Sometimes it even helps to have others around.

This has helped me timeshift a lot lately, as well as get more done.  Yes, it’s multitasking, but only when appropriate.

As  a note I will be the first to say that you should avoid multitasking when it reduces your ability to focus, get things done, or do them your best.  I usually do it when the multitasking is something more fun, or social, and so on.  Be careful when you do this until you learn what works for you.

However, if you make multitasking conscious, you can do it right.  You can also choose when not to do it because you’re more aware.

(By the way I do plenty of books for coaching people to improve in various areas, which may also help you out!)

– Steve

My Agile Life: Meetings

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

More on my use of “Agile” and Scrum in my life!  This is another one inspired by my personal agile, but a bit more focused on business.

Meetings are why we can’t reduce meetings.

I find my personal practice of Agile – with a one-man team – informing me about my work in the business world. Since I do all roles, since all information flows to and through me, I actually have a decent feel of what productivity is like because of personal Agile. Thanks to this experience, I can better see when things are messed up in the business world.

Lately, this reasonably decent personal workflow has made me see just how crazy meetings can make us. Trying to schedule them in my own life is tough enough; and then when you look at the job world . . .

We’re drowning in meetings. Sure we complain, but we keep doing them over and over again. We know they waste time. We know people don’t want to be there. We know the people on either side of us are checking Facebook.

We KEEP DOING MEETINGS.

Meetings are terribly inefficient, at least in the way they’re run. If you invite 20 people to a meeting that’s an hour long and each person gets 10 minutes of benefit out of it, then you spend 1200 minutes so people get 200 minutes of benefit. Sure, they may multitask and do other things, but they won’t do it well as if they were focused.

But we KEEP DOING MEETINGS.

I could list any number of reasons why pointless meetings are held, but I want to share a realization of why we don’t stop this insanity.

There are clear solutions to reducing, avoiding, or improving meetings. I’m sure three or four spring to mind as you read this, such as information radiators and quick check-ins. Despite having these clear solutions, we do not use them, and we’re back to 20 people in a room hating it.

Frustrating, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ve tried.

Having worked to transform teams, improve process, and so on, I’m painfully aware that any attempts to change how people work takes time and effort. It also takes meetings, because you have to coordinate, plan, normalize, and so on. Getting rid of meetings . . . may take meetings.

That’s the bogeyman under the bed of meeting-reduction. If we want to get rid of meetings, we have to make an up-front effort to do so, and that effort may require meetings. People don’t want to do these meetings, and might not even have time for them.

We can’t reduce meetings because of all the meetings we have.

Really, it’s enough to drive one to drink. I recommend Licor 43.

What’s the way forward here? In the past, I resorted to either incremental changes or just barreling ahead. My personal Agile work helps as it provides me a lot of gut-level explanations and insights (like this) to share with people, which helps the situation. I’m hoping this personal insight helps people get around meeting-phobia.

But at some point, you’re gonna have to have that meeting. To stop meetings.

Yeah, I know.

(By the way I do plenty of books for coaching people to improve in various areas, which may also help you out!)

– Steve

MVP and Anxiety (My Agile Life)

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

This is an odd post. In some ways it’s about psychology. In some ways it’s about my use of “Agile” and Scrum  in my life. Either way, I think you’ll find it valuable, even if you’re not reading those posts.

Imagine that you have a problem to solve, but you’re not sure how to solve it. Worse, this situation is complicated by having many options – a common problem in a wired age with so much at our fingertips. You’re paralyzed by choice and fear of the wrong choice – so what do you do and how do you get out of this?

There is a solution – and one that comes from Agile and Lean techniques. Yeah, I know, trust me on this and keep reading.

The solution is something called Minimum Viable Product or MVP. In software and general terms, it means something that delivers the minimum needed to go to market and satisfy customers and get feedback. To get an MVP you carefully look over what you have to do, pick the effective minimum for the audience, and get it done right.

In fact, an MVP may be all you need for a while. Consider how many people or companies use bare-bones web pages with nice graphics and don’t need any more. You can apply this philosophy to your life.

To use MVP in your life, from plumbing to writing, ask yourself what is the minimum you need to do well to get something complete and ready. Sit down, list your concerns or needs or whatever, pick only the ones that must be done, and do them. You’ve solved your problem, and if it’s not perfect, you can tweak it later if you need to.

(And yes, that’s over-simplified, but it’s enough to get you started.  MVPs for products get more complex.)

Here’s a few examples:

  • You want to have premade lunches for a week so you make a big pot of chili and garnish it differently each day. Next week you might cook two different meals at once, but this is done for the week so you can relax.
  • You want to get a chapter of a book to an editor, so you make sure it’s clearly readable without fiddling with it endlessly. The editor can take it the rest of the way so you’re not caught in a writer’s panic.
  • Traffic is crazy due to construction, so you find a path to work that, if not the fastest, is the least likely to be congested. For the rest of the month your commute is longer than usual, but it’s predictable.

These solutions are not perfect but they are good enough and they get you on your way. In some cases they’ll save you time from worrying more than doing.

The other benefit of MVP is that going for the MVP prevents what’s called paralysis through analysis in the business world – overthinking. MVP gets you on your way and moving forward. In turn, the fact you are at least done means you can reflect on what you did, what you need, and improve things later. Sometimes you don’t even know what you need until you’ve done something after all.

In many cases – especially in life – the MVP is all you need for a long time, maybe forever. Sure you repainted the bedroom the exact same color, you didn’t spend hours debating colors like “Thupe” and “Preamble Brown”. Yes, the report at work could look a bit better but no one cares about the cover color. MVP can often bring you back to reality as well as keep you from anxiety.

Next time you have to fix something or do something, think about the MVP. It’ll focus you on value, keep you from over-elaborating, and reduce anxiety.

(By the way I do plenty of books for coaching people to improve in various areas, which may also help you out!)

– Steve