Designing the ideal productivity workflow: Don’t push it
Anyone who has long been on the pursuit of improving productivity likely will have been faced at some point in that journey with a crippling overload of projects, tasks and deadlines. In these situations, it’s not unlikely to be faced with a growing pile of tasks to progress with a given project and a seemingly shrinking amount of free time to work on them. This is obviously an unsustainable workflow for tackling project. Why then do so many of us fall into this style of work? And more importantly, how do we get ourselves out of it?
I had long been struggling with this problem with projects in all aspects of professional and academic life. As a student, a build up of assignments on an already heaped pile of studying required a frenetic and frantic workstyle which led to frequent burnouts and lack of motivation. Similarly, as a spacecraft engineer, time-sensitive projects comprised of highly complex tasks - often given at short notice - means that additional responsibilities for contributions to different projects grow while available time to manage the overhead admin shrinks. And also, while writing this blog and producing YouTube videos, I would have a load of half written posts and scripts, unedited footage and a seemingly endless amount of content ideas.
So what do all of these have in common? They all operate on a “Push” based workflow. This concept was first introduced to me recently while I was reading “Slow Productivity” by Cal Newport and suddenly it all clicked. The way to prevent the overload that we are all so susceptible to requires a shift from a “Push” to a “Pull” workflow.
The Problem with Pushing
Before going into the upsides of switching project workflows to a pull system, it might be helpful to define what we mean we say push or pull workflows. To understand these two workflows, we need to imagine a project - that is a collection of tasks that collectively will take several days to complete at least.
A push system works by pushing work at each stage onward to the next stage as soon as it’s been complete. In this type of system, the focus of each stage of a project is to complete the tasks and immediately hand it to the next stage in the workflow. This often leads to a linear progression where the goal is to keep work flowing steadily from start to finish. However, there are several potential downsides to this approach. For instance, if any stage of the project experiences a delay or bottleneck, the subsequent stages might either be forced to wait or, conversely, be overwhelmed with tasks once the bottleneck clears. This system often results in a build up of tasks, leading to potential overwhelm and burnout.
A pull system works by pulling in new work at a given stage only when it’s ready for it. In other words, tasks are only moved forward when there is capacity to handle them. The pull system is designed to match the pace of the project workflow, allowing a balancing of workload and preventing bottlenecks. An important point to note before continuing is that ‘projects’ refer to work that would substantial enough that it will likely take multiple sessions to complete and are often made up of several tasks.
Push Productivity by Pulling
Now that we’ve had a glimpse at the likely risks of a push based system (overload and burnout) and the key intrinsic benefit of a pull system (the aversion of backlogs), let’s look deeper at what it means to have a pull based system, how to implement it, and how to ensure it’s long term success.
Implementing a pull based system is much more than a simple system to increase productivity. It’s a way of claiming responsibility
It fundamentally shifts the attitude we have towards towards greater efficiency, responsibility, and most importantly accountability of our time and energy. This approach can lead to more thoughtful, high-quality work as you regain the time and space needed to effectively engage more deeply with your tasks.
An effective strategy is needed to implement a pull system that ensures that it effectively aids our management of projects. To do this we must have three key sections of our strategy: Implementing, managing and maintaining the pull system.
Implementing a pull system
The key feature of an effective pull workflow is a system to manage projects that avoids the risk of working on too many projects at one time. In Slow Productivity, Cal Newport suggests that we should limit the amount of work that we’re currently working on to at most three projects. There are several techniques to do that, however the one suggested by Newport and the one that I’ve found to be most beneficial is to track all projects that you’re currently commited to into two lists:
Holding Tank - The list where most projects are held until they are being currently worked on.
Active List - The list that contains the 2-3 projects that you are currently working on.
The projects that you are currently working on or which are most time critical should be added to the Active List. This list should be limited to at most 3 tasks to minimise the burden of an overload of project commitments. When you commit to new projects, first add them to the Holding Tank and when a space opens on the Active List (whether that is because the active project has been completed or become irrelevant), a project can be transferred from the Holding Tank to the Active List.
There is no limit to the amount of projects that can be held in the holding tank. But when scheduling your time, your focus should be directed most towards the Active List. It may also be worth splitting up larger projects into sub-projects. For example, instead of “Make a video on slowing down productivity” it may be split into a project for scripting the video, filming the video and editing the video.
You may be asking: “What’s the best way of planning the pull system?”. There’s no real answer here. You could set up the Holding Tank and Active List on a scrap piece of paper, in a notebook or on a digital app that can sync across devices. I like to use Notion for this for it’s advanced database handling tools. You can download my Notion Pull System Template for free here.
Managing a pull system
While a large part of the upfront work of implementing a pull system is the setup, it’s just as important to ensure that you’re managing that system effectively. In a pull system, it may come as no surprise but it’s the intake procedure that you ‘pull’ from that is critical. This can be done in two ways, depending on where the projects are coming from.
If you’re self-employed, self-studying, a freelancer or working on a side project (like this blog), it will likely be you that is the primary source of new projects on your plate. Of course, this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but in these situations, you will typically have much more control over the amount of work that is funnelled towards you: You decide what topics you’re studying, what freelance work you’re taking on, or what blog posts you’re planning on writing. While this may appear as an ideal situation for implementing a pull system (since you’re just ‘pulling’ from yourself rather than another team), it requires a certain level of discipline to work correctly.
In this case, the key is honesty with yourself regarding how many projects you take on and when. It relates to the infamous saying:
“We overestimate what we can achieve in a day and underestimate what we can achieve in a year.”
The other scenario would be in a more traditional environment of employment or education, where you may not have complete autonomy or control over the projects that you’re committed to. In this case, you may be working in an environment that hasn’t implemented a pull system and so projects may often be pushed onto you.
The key in this situation is transparency. Be clear with those who are pushing new work onto you with your current project commitments as well as give an estimate for the length of time the new project will take. It’s crucial here to build trust with those pushing the work onto you. Be transparent with your workload and capacity to take on new work and always deliver on the promises that you give to others - even if the terms of the promise have to be changed slightly.
Maintaining a pull system
The final consideration when implementing a pull system is how it will be maintained. Earlier in this blog I mentioned that there is no upper limit to the size of the Holding Tank, and while this is true, it is worth regularly purging and updating your lists once a week.
Remove any completed projects from the Active List, and replace them with projects from the Holding Tank. Delete any redundant tasks from the Holding Tank that are no longer needed and review any upcoming deadlines for all projects in both lists. Projects that are due soon should be prioritised and so it’s also worth replacing any non-urgent projects from the Active List with those in the Holding Tank that have looming deadlines.
Conclusion
In this blog post, I’ve introduced a method from minimising burnout and overload of tasks from Cal Newport’s ‘Slow Productivity’. This method is built on the principle of a ‘pull’ based workflow in which tasks are pulled from one stage of a project to the next only when there is capacity to do so. A useful way of implementing this is with a Holding Tank and Active List to manage projects in which only the three most crucial projects are worked on at any one time. If implemented correctly, the pull method can drastically increase productive output while minimising the risk of overworking, mismanagement of tasks and burnout.