Doing less to do more is a common phrase used in the management circles. For me, however, it became shockingly clear a few days back.
During our daily standup, our CTO Michael LeBarron and I were discussing the tasks in our plates and the next thing that we will do. Both, Michael and I have been taking on more and more tasks for drbeen.com. We both felt pretty proud of the fact that we are rising up and offering ourselves to keep the company moving forward. Hey, we are high-performing folks.
Turned out that the full plate – as we call it in corporate lingo – is not only overwhelming for the owner, it also can result in paralysis of performance for a couple of important reasons:
- Prioritization of the task becomes hard when many of the tasks are almost equally important leading to decision paralysis.
- Some of the tasks are 180 degrees opposite to each other, for example, delivering lectures and selling, or writing code and creating marketing campaigns. Hence, one kind of effort does not help the other. The result is the paralysis of effort as the brain has to switch amongst the very different types of tasks.
We both decided to reduce our tasks, reduce the categories of the tasks in our plates, and to manage our day/time slots better.