Wade Armstrong

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Lazy Productivity: Never Give 100%

Posted Monday January 8, 2007 in Productivity

The New Year always brings new resolutions, and, armed with these resolutions, my friends — and probably yours — are working hard, getting projects done. Of course, having a project means one thing, as sure as death and taxes: being behind schedule. And a bunch of my friends are already behind schedule and stressed out about their new resolutions. That’s what happens when people plan their projects as if a person can give 100% at all times.

A human being is not a perfectly productive machine. Some days, we’re just on. Last Tuesday, for instance, I just lined up the to-dos and knocked them down. One project after another got completed, and I rang in the end of the first day of the new year ahead of schedule on everything. Friday was different; my doctor’s appointment took the whole morning, and then I hit the late-afternoon doldrums early, because I had tossed and turned all night rather than sleeping well. In between, sure, I knocked a couple of items off my to-do list, but Friday was no Tuesday.

There are a lot of days like Friday in my life, and probably in yours too. But we all plan based on days like Tuesday. Then, when a Friday predictably pokes up its head, we fall behind. And being behind is awful. Any responsible human being stresses out over it, even if the delay isn’t serious. And, if it is serious, then there are other consequences coming down the pike. It’s best to avoid being behind.

A lot of pundits have proposed solutions to getting behind. Some advocate new systems, which are fine, and can add to overall productivity, but rarely help on those bad days. Others give advice on how to, basically, suck it up, put the pedal to the medal, sleep less than four hours a night, and just get it done. And it’s true, from time to time, we can all just buckle down and get it done, but that’s not a solution either.

“Hustle”, as Frederick Brooks describes it in The Mythical Man-Month, is a key trait for an employee to have because it allows a team to make up for a slippage. But, when you’re working on your own, personal projects, or working alone at home, “hustle” can be your enemy. As Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister point out in Peopleware, overtime is always compensated for by “undertime” on a one-to-one basis¹ — undertime being both unproductive time and the time spent dealing with things that were put off to make space for overtime. In a team, other members of the team can compensate for undertime put in by one member of the team. But you’re the only member of your own team — if you get burnt out, you fall behind, and you bear all the costs of both feeling burnt out and falling behind.

On projects that are yours and yours alone, the cost of falling behind is high. Project mangers have a concept called the “critical path” — that’s the longest stretch of tasks, using a single resource or set of resources, that must be completed sequentially. The critical path defines the shortest time any project can take. Typically, in a team project, there are a lot of tasks that are off of the critical path, because there are lots of resources. But, when we’re talking just about you or me, every project is on the critical path, because we have only one key resource — ourselves. Brooks advises not worrying about slippage off the critical path; as true as this may be in a team, or at work, with all projects on the critical path, all slippage is critical, so the cost of falling behind is high.

So how to not fall behind? Never plan for 100%. We all have unproductive days, like my Friday, so be realistic about yours. A good way to do this is to avoid what Brooks calls the “fuzzy milestone” — set a date for completion for every current task. But don’t set an aggressive milestone, set a realistic one. Over time, if you assume 100% productivity at all times, you’ll miss milestone after milestone. Instead, assume a reasonable level of productivity; if you set your milestones around that, you’ll watch yourself make one after the next. If your reasonable level of productivity doesn’t get done everything you want to get done… well, now’s a good time to do some prioritizing. Maybe you can do a half-assed job on the unimportant projects, or just drop a few completely.

It seems counterintuitive, but by assuming a realistic level of productivity, you’ll achieve the most over time. Try this unproductive approach for a month and see your productivity go through the roof.

¹ I rather suspect that, once any kind of burnout sets in, two to three times as much undertime is needed to compensate for overtime.