Process Flow method

Do you have repeatable actions to do every day? Or what about one off projects? If so then here’s a great method I learned in Mark Forster’s How to Make Your Dreams Come True , which I have called process flow.

First, you list all the different types of tasks that you might perform on an average day. It might be Cold Call telephoning, online research, proposal writing. Then you might have that one off project that you never seem to be start. It might be one of those projects that could really move your business forward. It might not be urgent, so other things seem to take priority.

Next, you take all the actions and list them out on a table like below. Mark a number 5 in the box next to each task. This is because you will perform each task for just 5 minutes.

Start at the Top

So start with the task at the top of the list; Set your timer for 5 minutes and when the alarm goes, stop that task even if it’s not complete. You then move on to the next task. You would then repeat this until you have worked on all the task types for 5 minutes. If you complete the task, you mark another number 5 in the box to the right. This is because you will then repeat this the next day.
Any task you did not complete, you mark a number 10 in the next empty box. When you start the next cycle, you will be performing the tasks for 10-minute durations. If you complete the task, mark a 10 for the following day. If you didn’t finish it, it gets a 15.

Keep repeating this process until you get to 40-minute durations. This would be the maximum time you would spend on one task.
The benefit of this method is that we are firstly working on all the different tasks that are important, even though they might not be urgent.

We are also increasing our desire and motivation to do the work. The idea is that we are utilising a couple of psychological traits to our advantage here. First, by initially reducing the tasks to just 5 minutes in duration, we overcome our natural state of procrastination. Secondly, by stopping working before we have finished, we are using our natural need for completion. This makes us want to work on the task even more. As you rotate through you list of tasks, you start to go in to that state of flow that all high achievers desire.

Bottom Up method/ Top Down method

Another technique I borrowed from Mark Forster, I call the bottom up/ top down method. This is especially useful if you have a long to-do list full of unrelated types of tasks, some of which fill you with dread. This is another elegant method of overcoming that killer of success – procrastination.

Top down method:

With the top down method, the first thing you need to do is to list out your tasks. Next, you put an asterisk next to the item at the top of the list. Then you look at item number two and ask yourself if you would prefer to do this. If you would prefer to do this task, put an asterisk next to it. If not leave it blank. Then you repeat this process, working down your list, as you go down the list, the actions highlighted are more and more appealing to you. In theory, the lowest highlighted task on the list is the easiest or the nicest to do.

Next, start work on the top item. When you complete the task and cross it out. Then you move down the list to the next highlighted item. You repeat this until all the highlighted items are complete. The theory is that the tasks are getting easier and easier.

Once you have gone down your list once, you repeat the whole exercise with the tasks you ignored the first time. The highest task left on the list, then gets the asterisk. You then move down the list asking the same question – would I prefer to do this task.

By using this method, your work becomes progressively easy. This is a really effective way of gamifying your work. What I mean be this is that your work becomes a kind of play. This uses another key psychological human trait – we love to play.

Bottom up method:

With the bottom up method, when you come to starting your tasks, instead of starting with the hardest, you start at the bottom – the easiest. I know that a lot of the time management literature tells you to start with the hardest task first. In practice, though, sometimes you just need to make a start and the easiest task might just be the best place. Also by starting with the easiest task, you are making a start and creating momentum. And isn’t that the trick to all productivity? Making a start and creating momentum.

Backlogs

One final piece of technique I have adapted from Mark Foster is what to do if you find yourself in the situation of backlog. It could be that you have returned from your two week holiday to find over 1000 emails in your inbox. Or how about all those magazines that you have told yourself you will get round to reading. Or it could be just the mountain of work that has landed across your desk. How do you tackle this and also keep up to date with new stuff that comes in?

You declare a backlog.

Its a bit like declaring yourself financially bankrupt. Except you are going to pay this debt back. What you do is you take your entire to-do list and put it to one side. If it’s an email backlog, then move all your unread outstanding emails into a separate folder and name it backlog file. If it’s a reading list, physically move the items to one neat pile. One word of advice, though. That is to declare a backlog on only one type of item, ie email, to-do list or reading material.

Next, you add a project to your project list called Backlog Project. This works really well with the process flow grid (above). You are then going to carry on processing new work as it comes in and work on your ongoing projects. When you come to work on the Backlog project, just work at it like any other project, without guilt.

The beauty of treating your backlog like this, is that you are still tackling it, but you will also be tackling new stuff as it comes More importantly though, you are still working on your goals and projects.
Finally, when you do eventually clear the backlog, you could do some self-analysis asking yourself how you came to get so behind. What process can you put in place, to prevent it happening again?

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When we talk of managing projects, strictly speaking, we don’t actually do projects. So what is a project? Well I would describe a project as a group of related tasks, that when performed, help you to achieve a specific outcome.

So this broad description, could describe anything from getting a tyre replaced to building a bridge, which is not particularly helpful. If instead we think of what our outcome is first, we can decide whether it can be achieved with one action or more than one. Many times, procrastination arises because the particular task we keep putting off isn’t actually a task but is a project. Therefore when we are performing our daily In-to-Empty routine , we should analyse each item to see if it is actually a project.

Here is an example. One day you are going through your cold call telephone list and you realise, that you might be better off with a script. So you write in your notebook – “write telephone sales script” as a to-do item. Then when you come to process this entry, at your daily review, you then transfer this to your To Do list. But this is where it stays. Every time you have some discretionary time, you come to this entry on your list and you flinch. You just can’t face doing it. Procrastination has struck.

The reason you are numb to this task, is that it isn’t a task, it’s a project and you need to treat it as such. The following is a simple procedure to go through with to do items like this, to break them into lovely little manageable chunks that you will love to do.

Why?

Every project needs a purpose, or why should you start it. This should be your first question. Why should I spend any time or energy on this project?
Well let’s take our sales call script example. You would write down all the reasons for starting this project. What will you gain? In this example, having a script would mean that your calls would be consistent. You could track your success rate and tweak your script to see if you can get better conversion results. Ultimately your sales will improve, which means more commission and cash in your pocket, more job satisfaction – result happiness. So we can proceed with this project. What if we can’t come up with a compelling reason to proceed with a project? Well we should just stop there and remove the project from our list.

What exactly is the outcome?

The next question we should ask is what exactly are we trying to achieve. What is the outcome? You should be specific as you can with this. What are the tangible results you will gain?
For instance in our telephone script example the outcome would be that we will use a written script for all our cold telephone canvassing calls. Usually something quite amazing happens at this stage. Just through the action of writing the purpose and specific outcome, our creative juices start to flow. Once the ideas start to flow, we should get them written down.

Mind Maps

Mind maps are great for getting ideas down and seeing the links. There are loads of good mind mapping software tools, but if you ask me, you can’t beat a piece of blank paper and a pen. If you are new to mind mapping or need a bit of a refresher, I can recommend the inventor of mind mapping, Tony Buzan in one of his many booksMind Mapping to explain better. You can also find some great videos on-line.
Once you have your mind map, you can start to make associations and links. Are certain areas linked to others? Again a picture is worth more. The branches and sub branches are then actually individual tasks that you can do.

Post-It notes

Next, I like to start to transfer the main ideas/subtasks onto post-it notes. There is nothing more elegant than sticking these post-it notes to a white board, so that you can organise them into some kind of chronological sequence.

Organising tasks

Next, as hinted at above, we can organise our post-it notes into a logical sequence. You might find that this process will also jog your mind and you will think of further additional tasks that you need to do.

Strategic Next Actions

Although it is great to have a detailed plan of all the actions you need to take, the most important thing you need to have nailed down is the next action. If there is one thing you take from this whole process of managing your projects effectively it is this: You only need three things to complete a project successfully:

• A purpose – why are you doing this project?
• A specific defined outcome.
• A next action – often called a strategic next action SNA

Your SNA is the next thing that needs to happen to move your project towards completion. Once you have completed this SNA, guess what, you should define the next SNA. You keep repeating this until you reach completion. This is particularly useful for those tricky, murky projects. You know the ones; the ones where you have no idea on how you will complete the project ie you know the Why and the What, but not the How.

With this method of using a SNA, you don’t need to know every single step in the process of how you will complete the project – all you need is the next action. A good example would be setting up a business. Having read a huge amount of business literature over the years, from what I can tell the successful entrepreneurs, don’t really have a clear detailed plan. They just had a clear objective, a deadline, a good compelling reason why and they figured out what to do next. They just kept on doing the next thing repeatedly.

Project Task Lists

Although you don’t need a detailed plan, it is useful to be able to collate all of a project’s related actions in one list. For this reason, I recommend that you use a separate simple Project Task List. This can be as simple as a sheet of paper, with the name of the project and outcome written at the top, followed by a list of actions related to it. You can fill one of these out for each of your projects. The beauty is that you can add to it (and remove) as you progress through your project.

Project Lists and Goals

I don’t recommend working on more than three projects at a time, especially if you have multiple goals as well. In an ideal world you would only be concentrating on one thing at a time until you complete it. Unfortunately, we are not all lucky enough (yet) to be able to focus on one project to the exclusion of everything else. Many of us have multiple areas of focus and with them, many projects that need to be tracked.

I use (again) a simple written list to track my projects. I work only on a maximum of three projects at a time. See the post The Power of Focus. I will only start on a new project once, all three are completed. In this way, I keep my focus, whilst also acknowledging that I can’t completely shut out all the other areas of focus.

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