Capacity Planning
Missed deadlines are not only caused by poor execution or lack of skills/resources. Another major factor is when we fail to set the right deadlines.
So, here my tips to set up an accurate deadlines!
1. There is never the word “bear”
Haven’t we ever said, “We’re willing to work on the report, even though we have a meeting in 15 minutes, it’s better later”?
Without us knowing it, there are lots of “bearing” moments in 24 hours (one day). Finally, we may waste more than 2–3 hours per day.
Another example is “bearing still at 11.00, it’s better to start studying at 11.30 only”
Whether it’s scrolling through Instagram or YouTube until 11.40, you keep saying “bear, you’ll learn later at 12.00”.
People who have a lot of things to get done don’t constantly say “bear”. Why? Because every minute matters.
It doesn’t matter if in 15 minutes you only manage to do 1 paragraph of discussion, that’s progress.
It doesn’t matter if you only manage to find references in 10 minutes, the important thing is that you’ve got the concept.
2. Know which ones to do yourself and which ones to ask for help from others.
With so much busyness that we have, it’s hard for us to do everything alone. Sometimes we think it’s better to ask other people for help, especially if that person is better.
According to the Eisenhower Matrix, our tasks can be divided into 4 quadrants. In my opinion, high achievers can usually avoid “urgent, not important” tasks by delegating them to other people.
In essence, we must be able to utilize the resources around us as well as possible, either by coordinating, sharing tasks, or even being transferred to other people.
What does “transferred to someone else” mean? For example, we pay other people to complete our work. So the time we have can be used for important tasks, not “urgent, but not important”.
3. Stick to a simple system
With so many productivity systems out there, sometimes we become FOMO and try to try everything (Bullet journal, Google Calendar, Notion, Microsoft To Do list, Toggl, Trello, etc.). In the end, the system becomes cumbersome and unusable.
If we look at high achievers, they usually only use a simple system to keep track of their tasks. Rarely does anyone use several platforms at the same time, because there is no time to fill them all, which ends up confusing themselves.
I personally choose to use Notion to create to do lists, daily, weekly, monthly agendas. Whatever the system, as long as it doesn’t make it complicated and overwhelming.
4. Learn to do things faster
This includes thinking, writing/typing, reading, even listening to faster recordings or videos. Imagine if we could listen to lecture recordings at 1.5x speed and still understand what it was about, it would save a lot of time, right?
Then, how to train it? Try to give deadlines for everything. For example, within 50 minutes we have to finish watching a lecture recording, or within 30 minutes we can write a journal page.
If you force it, you’ll get used to it after a while!
5. Creative vs Administrative Work Balance
In my opinion, our duties are generally divided into 2:
1). Creative Work: Requires full thinking and concentration, requires ideas and critical thinking.
2). Administrative Work: Does not require full concentration, can be done while doing other things, not too tiring.
In reality, this creative and administrative work must be balanced. If everything is creative work, everyone will be tired, if everything is administrative work, everything will be bored.
Creative work is done when our brains are most effective. In addition, ideas can come from anywhere, so we can think about them while eating, bathing, and others. So when it’s time for us to do the creative work, the ideas have been collected and we just have to work on it.
While administrative work is done when our brains are tired. So you don’t always take a break by scrolling through social media or watching YouTube, you can also do administrative tasks (tidying up margins, data entry, etc.) while listening to your favorite songs and eating snacks.
