Thursday, 7.15pm
Sheffield, U.K.
A fixed deadline and a flexible scope are the crucial combination. – Jason Fried
It’s been one of those days. Like millions of others we have had to balance home schooling, work, sledging in the snow and the myriad other things that make up our everyday lives. And it’s exhausting like the memes circulating show. And while the videos show us the funny side of things they’re not very useful in telling us what to do.
And what should be doing is less.
The fact is that we have a fixed amount of time each day and working harder now is simply going to lead to burnout later. You might deliver and keep up for a while but eventually you’ll struggle and the fallout will be worse.
The answer is to keep the total amount of weight you’re carrying the same but do less of each thing so that the total weight stays the same. This means that you should reduce the scope of what you’ve got to deliver in the time you have by focusing on only the important, the crucial, the things that are necessary. And the rest can wait until things are back to normal.
Drawing is a good example. I might want like to draw a complex and nuanced piece but I don’t have time and a line drawing on an index card will get the point across. And that’s ok.
Well, that’s all I have time for today. See you in the next post.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 