Much means productive — how to organize your work to perform better

Michal Jurkowski
3 min readApr 17, 2020

The common problem of the all tasks estimations and planning is bad refinement. But the problem with all delays are bad work organizing.

I work with a lot of people and many organizations. Each there were a problem with work organization, where was a lot of dependencies between the teams or people and a lot of delays which were the side effects of this dependencies. For many years I was working on my own productivity system, that can allow to work better with people and deliver more value to my projects.

I have for you some gift — 6 small rules that can make your work more effective

1. Start small, be fast

When the sprint begin, I start from the smallest tasks. This ones that can take few minutes or that which I can do many for one day. Sometimes it’s some bugs that I need to fix, but sometime it’s a documentation, report writing or replay in some discussions. When you start doing this small things at first, the you will be happy, because you did a lot.. not work but tasks. But this thing will motivate you for next days.

2. Balls and chains

All delays exist by the complicated dependencies that are between the teams. So to be this one who resolve this dependencies take this important quote.

It is better that I need to wait for someone, then someone needs wait for me

That’s my words! If you will resolve the problems in this dependencie’s puzzles faster, then all delays will decrease, and you will look like responsible.

3. Eat the frog

Do you know how to eat the raw frog? Quickly and completely!

That’s the most important if you want to be fluent in task solving. But easy — that’s normal that you avoid and beat for late the tasks that you don’t want to do. Don’t be scare — as quickly and completely you will it done, then you will be free of scare and negative emotions. Like with frog eating — if you will try to eat the frog long and part by part, then you will feel the taste very precisely. I think that will be the torture.

But that’s your choice.

4. Minimum value, maximum results — Pareto effect

Do you know the Pareto effect ? 80% of our results was from 20% of our work. Focus on that things, that makes an effect, probably there are the smallest things that you do! Don’t forget about it!

5. Track your progress — escalate the problems

Every day before I start, I look for my dashboard with sprint plan. Then I know what should I do today and in next days. This is progress tracking. But sometime on your task you will find kind of blockers like delays because someone didn’t deliver his part. Don’t be afraid and escalate the problem. Tell it to that person who blocks you first, next tell it on you daily that there is a problem, finally tell your manager or escalate on the problem on public meeting. It’s important to escalate the problems if it’s exists, because if you avoid it, then the delays will be longer and longer.

6. Refine, estimate, plan, track, review

Working on your productivity system is a process, that have some phases that you do in some loops. So be sure, that every task that you take was refined, estimated and planned before you start. Next be focus on its tracking, and after finish review whole process if the task was well refined, estimated and planned and if there were some problems during the work. Make this steps every time that you plan your work, then after some time you will see that your estimations and refinements will be excelence!

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