Stalled Sequences
I was hosting the first Biweekly Breakout session with the members of my TimeCrafting Trust community when I realized I’d put a key element of my methodology in the wrong order.
I’ve always listed The 5 Categories of Mode-Based Work for TimeCrafting in the following order:
- Theme-Based Modes
- Resource-Based Modes
- Energy-Based Modes
- Activity-Based Modes
- Time-Based Modes
What falls into each of these categories isn’t important in this article. I’ll have a way for you to get that information at the bottom of this piece. But, after describing the categories during the session, I realized that I had the first and last categories in the wrong order.
Why? Because understanding time-based modes is far easier than understanding theme-based modes.
In fact, as you go through each category in sequence, the order of easiest to most challenging is as follows:
- Time-Based Modes
- Resource-Based Modes
- Energy-Based Modes
- Activity-Based Modes
- Theme-Based Modes
I’ve listed the sequence in the wrong order for years. It took me explaining it out loud to the members in the Biweekly Breakout session for me to hear it and realize my mistake.
I’d often wondered why clients and members had difficulty grasping mode-based work as if it was somehow beyond them. It turns out I had stalled them in the sequence right from the start.
Sure, by the time someone gets to one of the later categories I expected some struggles and stalling. But once they got through that and got to the time-based mode category, they’d be home free.
If I had put time-based modes as the first category in the sequence, they’d be able to hit the ground running because time is far simpler to understand than theme is.
The same kind of stalled sequences can happen on your to-do list. Putting a list of tasks for a project together in the wrong order can slow or halt progress. Sometimes you can even assemble the sequence incorrectly in a subconscious way because you actually want to be slowed down or stopped altogether.
Take a look at your sequences. Perhaps you should do what I did with one of your sequences and read it aloud. You may find a few blind spots when you do.
Then, you can turn a stalled sequence into a stronger sequence.
As promised, you can read more about Mode-Based Work here at Productivityist.com.
