How I prioritise my time using agile practices, radical incrementalism and the progress principle
Biting off what you can chew
This week I prioritised an appropriate amount of work. I knew that several things would fly in over the course of the week and I made sure I accounted for this in my prioritisation. Looking back at the week I accomplished everything I set out to do. This doesn’t always happen, but when it does, I get an immense sense of satisfaction.
I write a weeknote every week for folks at Basis. I share the things I’ve been thinking about, make connections between the work of different members of the team and celebrate our successes. This week, I abandoned the script to talk about how I prioritise my time and make progress day to day. I figured that how I do this might be of interest to others who are trying to find a way that works for them.
Agile for one
I manage each week like a one-week sprint. I have a Kanban board in Trello that I have used for 4 years. It has the following lists:
- Parking lot (34 cards)
- Backlog (38 cards)
- Sprint backlog (0 cards)
- To do (0 cards)
- Doing (1 card — this weeknote)
- Blocked (2 cards)
- Done (2,184 cards)
My backlog is a long list of stuff that I have built over time. It includes a combination of things including:
- Work to develop Basis as an organisation
- Business development/product development ideas
- Big goals or epics on projects I’m supporting
- Worries that I know I need to attend to
All of the cards are written in language that would make sense to anyone, and more specifically to me, even if I haven’t looked at the card for several weeks. The work is relatively undefined but it’s clear to me what the purpose of the work is. A current example of something near the top of my backlog is: “confirm a years worth of meet-up dates for the xx community of practice with xx council”. A non-project example is: “sign off the end of year accounts with accountants”.
As ideas come to me I add to the backlog. I add things there most days. To ensure it doesn’t get completely out of hand, every couple of weeks I refine it. I get rid of the work that is no longer a priority and if I think something needs to happen at some point in the future but I don’t want to be deciding whether or not it’s a priority every week, I move it into the parking lot. This gets refined every month or so.
Creating time each week to think about what I want to achieve
At 7:30 every Monday I look over the backlog and my diary for the fortnight ahead. My diary has things being added and removed all the time and there is a good chance I need to be involved in some work that is not on my backlog and will require my effort. Once I know what I’m going to need to do I prioritise what I’m going to do for the week. I move cards from the backlog and add new ones based on what my diary tells me.
Once the list is full I try and be honest with myself about how realistic it’s going to be, given my available capacity, to get through what I’ve prioritised. If there’s too much, I move the lowest-priority work back into the backlog. I know many things will fly in over the course of the week. It could be that I need to help someone in the team with a challenge they’re dealing with. Or a client might ask for a proposal to help them with a new piece of work. I try to hold back about 20% of my time for the unexpected. I’ve got two, two-hour slots in my diary on a Tuesday and Thursday afternoon blocked out to deal with this stuff. This helps create slack.
Practising radical incrementalism
Each day I start by prioritising three pieces of work from the sprint backlog that I want to accomplish during the day. Depending on the size of the work I might need to break it down further into smaller tasks. Either way, I only have three pieces of work on my to-do list at any given time. Essentially, I’m trying to practice radical incrementalism, an idea I came across in Oliver Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.
As my to-do list dwindles I pull in the next task (never more than three). At the end of the day, everything I’ve prioritised gets moved back to the sprint backlog. At the beginning of the next day, I prioritise my next three tasks. I’ve found this to be a really useful practice. Having only three things to focus on makes it easier to prioritise relatively between them. Doing this with a list of 10 things is extremely difficult. Having only three priorities also means that if something important flies in it’s relatively easy for me to decide which of my three tasks can be dropped to accommodate the new priority.
If I’m blocked on a piece of work it goes into blocked — mind blown. This acts as a reminder to follow up or try to unblock this at some point over the course of the week. By habit rather than by design I usually tend to this list on a Thursday afternoon.
Consistent progress helps with motivation
According to Harvard Business School’s Teresa Amabile, there is nothing more motivating than one’s own progress. As I make progress I religiously move the work into doing and then into done. At the end of each day, I try to remember to look at my done list and remind myself that I made progress. This gives me a little boost and some momentum to take into the following day.
At the end of the week, if there is anything left in my sprint backlog I move it back into the main backlog. If I have time over the course of the Friday I will try and order the backlog a little bit so that the most important stuff is closer to the top. This saves me some time on Monday when I am trying to remember what needs to happen in the upcoming week.
This approach has taken me a long time to refine. But it works for me. It helps me stay focused on what is actually important, makes doing deep work significantly easier and helps build momentum and motivation over the course of the week. If you try any of these ideas out, let me know how the experiment goes.
