A while back Shelby Sapusek shared a guest post on this site entitled “What to do when there’s too much to do,” and something she said in that post about tasks taking as long as they take caught my eye. She’s right; as much as we want to predict how long a given task will take, all we are really doing is guessing. Sure, it’s a best guess based upon past experience but it’s still just a guess. Unforeseen events will often trip up your best estimates for both the better and worse.
The best laid plans of mice and men …
On one recent trip, we had set aside a day and a half to work on a video script and shoot some of the footage that we couldn’t duplicate in our office. We got lucky. The team worked efficiently together and the storyboard for the video came together quickly. We got lucky again when the video shooting came off without a hitch and we had all the footage we needed within a couple hours. By noon of day two, we were done.
We could have just as easily run out of time and had to come up with a plan B. Instead, we gained half a day that we used to lay in the sun by our hotel pool. The thing is we didn’t just lay there relaxing and drinking adult beverages. Our notebooks were close at hand and we talked business all day. Does it really matter if the brainstorming session happens next to a pool or in a boardroom?
Work when work needs to be done
I could make a compelling argument that brainstorming that happens away from the office is oftentimes more productive. The point is to work when and where you can on the tasks that need doing. You won’t always get to decide how long tasks take, but you can decide what to work on and when.
In our case, we needed to brainstorm a few of the projects we are working on. It was irrelevant if the brainstorming session occurred by the pool Friday afternoon or back in the office Tuesday afternoon. Either way, the brainstorming was going to have to happen.
All the uses of your time matter
When I say time is irrelevant, I mean that the task you are currently working on – be it taking time to plan and shoot a video or sitting by the pool and brainstorming – is less important than the fact you are working on a task. Both the previous examples are good uses of time and it does not matter how much time either takes as long as the work gets done.