I run across bad advice from time to time and today, I’m calling out one bit of advice that must be addressed.
If you’ve found or followed this advice in the past, I want to help you understand that it’s NOT going to serve you or give you the kind of progress I know you’re looking for.
Here it is below—and again, this is NOT PRODUCTIVE ADVICE. Please DO NOT follow it. I’ll explain why afterwards…
“Put a time limit on tasks: Tasks expand to fill the time they’re given, or so argues Parkinson’s law. If you give a task two hours rather than one, the amount of work you need to do to accomplish the task will simply expand to fill the full two hours. Take another look at your time audit and identify tasks that took longer than you expected. Set a time constraint on those tasks. By setting constraints you will improve your focus and work more efficiently.”
This is ridiculous advice right out of the gate for two reasons.
First, if the advice-giver is talking about setting aside an hour—or TWO—they’re not talking about TASKS, they’re talking about PROJECTS.
Secondly, there are SO many different KINDS of tasks you can do in your job or business, there’s just no way this silly blanket statement can apply to every single one of them.
Meanwhile, whether we’re talking about projects or tasks, there are a LOT of other flaws in this advice to address here…
#1 – In most cases, a time constraint won’t lead to faster progress. This is especially true if a task isn’t defined well to begin with, in which case, a time limit is only going to add pressure and confusion.
Time limits can make you feel overwhelmed, which won’t help you think clearly or improve your focus.
#2 – If your “task” is really a project, you might spin your wheels trying to figure out what to do first or where to begin. When time’s up, you’ll likely NOT have accomplished what you set out to do or made much progress if any time has been wasted.
Giving yourself an hour to do something, when you’re not really sure WHAT you need do isn’t going to help you make any progress.
#3 – You never know where a task will lead. The unexpected can occur. Technology can pose a road block. Things can go wrong. But you have to EXPECT that these things will happen sometimes. The best thing is to be prepared with a task management process that supports you so you can quickly pivot and move on.
It’s not what goes wrong with a task that hurts your productivity. It’s how quickly you can handle it.
#4 – You may have identified a “dependent task,” which is a task that is really DEPENDENT upon taking another action step FIRST. A good example of this is, “Create the agenda for the monthly Management Meeting.” But that’s potentially a multi-step task. You may want to review last month’s agenda or minutes first, or you might have to call John and Judy to see what they need to add to the agenda this month. Any one of those (and more) could be your REAL next action step.
Setting a time limit is NOT the key to progress on a task that’s not properly outlined and is dependent upon taking an entirely different step first.
#5 – Tasks are unpredictable. Tasks often expand and WILL take longer than you expect, which is why the advice above makes me laugh. Action steps lead to NEXT action steps and you don’t always know what those will be. Tasks can expand in scope or they can take you down a completely different path, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It happens all the time.
A good example of this is when you have to make a call or send an email to another person as a part of accomplishing your task. This can not only expand the original task, but also lengthen the time you must spend before reaching the finish line.
It’s not essential to have a crystal ball to map out EVERY single step you’ll do in a project. What counts is planning the ONE action step you need to take next and when you’ll take that step.
Here’s the deal. Making progress on a task is NOT going to result from setting a time limit.
To get the progress you want, don’t define the amount of time you’ll give to a task. Instead, DEFINE the task.
This is the main problem with the poor advice above and for much of the poor advice out there…
NO ONE IS DEFINING A “TASK.”
Again, in the poor advice above, the advice-giver was really talking about projects, not tasks, but if you didn’t know that, you’ll be led astray about what a “task” really is.
Do you know what a “task” really is?
If not, it’s probably causing a lot of the hesitation and procrastination you experience when tasks are stated too big or they’re really stated as projects.
When tasks aren’t documented as REAL tasks, it can cause a lot of confusion about what really needs to be done, which creates issues regarding when to take action, and when THAT happens, you could end up overlooking a task, delaying a project or causing snags for others if you’re on a team.
So, let’s define a TASK.
A task in Taskology® is a VERY small action step—either the FIRST action step to get something started or the NEXT action step to keep something moving forward.
You’ve got to focus on identifying very SMALL action steps. And when you think you’ve identified the smallest action step you can take, TEST your outcome by seeing if you can dial it back any further.
When you define VERY small action steps—and take one after the other—this is when you’ll see noticeable, tangible progress.
Think of it as LIMITING the action step you take to one that’s VERY small. When you’ve accurately identified a small action step—a true task—it’ll be between 30 seconds and 30 minutes in length. It’s ONE step. There are a lot of nuances to this, of course, but this general framework will get you started in the right direction.
So don’t think in terms of limiting your TIME for a TASK. Limit the TASK. DEFINE it. And make is SMALL.
Really THINK about what you would do first or next if you were going to work on this task RIGHT NOW. Define it as precisely as you can.
Do this for EVERY project and to-do you have on your to-do list. They ALL need action by taking a small first or next action step.
Progress won’t come from limiting the time you spend on a “task” you haven’t truly defined.
It’s in taking those SMALL action steps where you’ll find steady forward movement and that’s the progress you’ve been looking for.
