I used Working Sessions to 10x my team’s productivity
One of the best productivity hacks I used that ended up being especially helpful in the post-covid remote working age was Working Sessions.
A Working Session is where members in a project [typically 3–5] would hop on a 60–90 minute video call with the audio and video on, and work on sections of a common project together. Typically in silence, sporadically cut with clarifications on the work being done.
The idea is to facilitate two things:
- Allocated group-enforced productivity time dedicated to moving the needle for one specific project together.
- Drastically shorter iteration, and reduced back and forth, by allowing doubts to be clarified in real-time
The outcome of these sessions is typically equivalent to a few day’s worth of back and forth resolved and produced in a matter of an hour.
So far, I have found that the type of work being done through these sessions are typically around reports, Powerpoint presentations, or any process requiring research or analysis.
There are a lot of different concepts with the same “Working Session” name, but to my knowledge, this is the first time this specific concept has been framed.
Working Sessions is similar to Sprints with two key exceptions. Sprints, a popular product management concept, typically aims to break up a project into a series of 30-day parts that allow cross-functional teams to work together within this boxed time on a list of tasks, and finish each series of Sprints to be submitted for review to the Product Owner.
Working Sessions are similar, but have a few exceptions:
- Working Sessions are synchronous short-term (60–90 minute) calls rather than asynchronous multi-day periods
- Working Sessions can be a regularly scheduled event, but can also be on an ad-hoc basis for suddenly time-sensitive projects
I first used this framework 3 years ago:
When Chia introduced synchronous online working sessions to me for the first time while we were both at Antler, I found it was a compelling and effective concept, especially once we tried it out in practice. The compelling thing about the working sessions is that it: 1) allows for immediate sparring and swift iterations in call and; 2) imposes accountability towards your team members as a consequence of its construction.
Point 2) I believe is particularly powerful, as procrastination very much lies in human nature (despite a rational understanding of it being an inefficient way of working — most people tend to fall victim to it). From co-creating with others, not only will you get better results, but you’ll also ensure that you’ll get to the final deliverable faster, as you force yourself to crystallise your thinking and generate output understandable to others at first iteration. Since the accountability goes at least both ways (if only 2 people) and at best between all nodes (between all participants in the session) it creates a positive and reinforcing feedback loop between participants — why the output drastically improves compared to going at a project in silos.
— Bjorn Nilsen, now Investor at Heartcore Capital
When I moved on to Saison Capital, COVID hit a few months into the job, and I found myself working with a team of Associates I had hired without ever meeting face to face, and split across 3 time zones.
Working Sessions was a great complement to increasing output, particularly where a simple set of back-and-forth communications could drag across days due to time-zones and shorter periods of overlapping active time zones.
A side-effect of Working Sessions was that they helped with culture and bonding. Although most of the calls were done in silence, you could pick up all the subtle audio and visual cues that you would have easily have done if you were physically working together with this person:
Would this person make weird noises while they worked? Would they ramble when asking short questions? Would they crack jokes while working?
Interestingly, the closest example I found out there to this concept of Working Sessions when writing this article was Focusmate, which was basically like ChatRoulette but for 50-minute productivity/accountability sessions.
Do you have any other productivity hacks that you use or have heard about? I would love to hear about it — comment below!
Thanks to Bjorn Nilsen for his contribution to this article.
Chia Jeng Yang, Principal at Saison Capital, dives into consumer, SaaS, and fintech investment trends across the U.S. and Asia, builds projects in the venture capital and public policy space, works closely with early-stage (Pre-A) founders and can be contacted at jengyang.chia@gmail.com. Previous work here: http://chiajy.com
