Category: Productivity

Work reflection from my time at Conestoga

Originally published on LinkedIn.

“Most of the time, we work in the system, not on it. […] If there’s a hole in the boat, it’s easy to spend all day bailing water with a bucket. Or we can take a moment to pull the boat onto the dock and fix the leak. When we work in the system, all we can do is bail. When we work on the system, we have a chance to make things better.”

“161. To Get to New York,” This Is Strategy, by Seth Godin.

I was not let go from my job at Conestoga due to issues of performance or competence. But even though the organizational restructure was not my fault, I am reflecting on the lessons learned from issues that I was responsible for.

Accreditation is hard work. I saw 5 successful program accreditations in four years. By that metric alone, I delivered value.

Seth’s words spoke to the side of me that struggled. In retrospect, I wasn’t quite ready for the role when I started. I did not have a lot of experience in project management, and that showed in the ways I became the bottleneck to the work of the Chairs, Faculty, and the Degree Consultants (who bailed me out many times). In the end, we delivered (sometimes a little after the deadline), but in my inexperience I failed to see that in project management, problems trickle in slowly then happen all at once.

When I let things pile up, or when my attention was flitting across many projects, tasks, and areas of concern, I was just doing my best to keep my head above water and keep the system going.

I now know what it means to periodically pause to step back and look at things from a higher perspective, or as Seth says put the boat into dock and fix the leaks.

The leaks? Those were the things that made the system less efficient, lowered quality, and required a lot of manual inspection and rework. I’d plug a hole by locking down cells in Excel instead of helping faculty see the meaning of what was in it. I’d discuss the value of creating a culture of quality, but I’m sure most faculty still saw it as yet more work on the overhead of teaching. And perhaps the greatest sin is to generate a list of actionable tasks that only dealt with operations instead of seeking to move the needle on important metrics like measuring against graduate attribute attainment or improving retention.

All of these things would have been fixed in time, I’m sure. For now, I’ll just ensure I carry that lesson forward.

Looking at Old Problems

Here is a note I wrote to myself watching a training video:

“While a lot of these (insights) are basics that I already know, I am doing a terrible job at following them (to use my time effectively during the work day). Yes, I’m procrastinating by watching (the) video as if it will be the magical thing that fixes all my problems. Still, I also believe in the need to repeat messages, messages resonating at different times, and new ways to view old problems.”

There is something to be said for shiny new toys distracting us from just sitting down to get the work done. It’s not a knowledge problem, it’s an application problem. As Derek Sivers points out, if it were a matter of knowing, we’d all have six-pack abs and a million dollars in the bank. I fully acknowledge that I don’t need another video to teach me how to be more productive.

As it is said, there are many paths up the mountain. Some are harder, some are more direct. I have to allow myself some space and grace to realize that I don’t know everything, that I’m going to make mistakes, and that each day resets to zero to try again.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Stress Adaption

Exercise teaches us that to become stronger (read: more capable), you must grow through a process of exposure to controlled stress, recovery, then adaptation, so that you can handle the same stress loads with less conscious, intentional effort. This is a useful metaphor for handing other kinds of stress in our lives. Therefore, to overcome, you must develop your stress-capacity beyond whatever it is that is creating your fear, anxiety, or pain.

There are limitations to this simplification, such as bodily ailments and chronic systemic issues, but as a general idea, this shows an empowering approach that allows you to take responsibility over finding paths forward to good outcomes. You don’t have to resign yourself to passivity; it is possible to be active in redefining what you are capable of.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Sustainable Effort in Work

I reflected in my journal today that, once again, I went through another weekend without circling back on to do’s I had intended to get to when I left the office on Friday. Whether I have a good reason for not working on the weekend (such as us hosting family this weekend) or I just absentmindedly forget to look at my notebook at home, the net result is the same – my good intention effort to squeeze in work was never realized.

The thing is, I keep deluding myself into thinking that I can get all this work done in my downtime. I used to do it all the time, why not now?

But it’s foolish to believe that what worked for me in my twenties, when I was not married, without a kid, and with fewer responsibilities to carry, will somehow magically work for me now through hard work and gritty determination.

Maybe my expectations are wrong. Maybe I just need to accept that when I leave the office, I leave work behind to be picked up on Monday. Perhaps that feels unambitious, but if the work isn’t getting done anyway, maybe I should feel less crappy in disappointing myself.

And at least it’s more honest.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

A Burnout Metaphor

I’ve recently been turned onto Van Neistat’s YouTube channel. Van, the older brother of Casey Neistat, is a true pleasure to watch – he’s the DIYer’s DIYer and his style is untainted by modern social media. He’s the best of the Gen X cohort without the pretension or cynicism.

In his video meditating on the nature of burnout, he described slow burnout in terms of a motor with the cylinders breaking down one at a time. I’ve never thought about burnout in this way, but the image struck me hard. I find it to be a very apt description, where a motor can lose a cylinder and still operate, but there will be consequences to continuing to run, such as damage to the motor, inefficiencies of fuel consumption, increased wear on other components in the chain, and vibration in the ride. From a mechanical perspective, if you choose not to fix the issue, so long as you reduce the load on the engine and cut the fuel going to the cylinder, you can get away with running down a cylinder. For a time.

Of course, this probably will be harder and costlier to fix later.

It’s better to fix the issue up front, but that usually is expensive as well – the time, cost to diagnose, and cost to repair.

Work and life burnout seems to function the same way – if you choose to ignore the problem, you can still operate, but you have to accept the knock-on consequences of operating out of balance. At some point, the engine will stop running. Or, you can pause and try to identify the problem up front and fix it then, which can be expensive and uncomfortable.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Defaults

I’ve been thinking about habits lately. It mostly started when I would reflect or review on my weekly productivity output – or more specifically the lack of output – and realized that I tended to procrastinate a lot in fairly predictable ways. My behaviour of choice to avoid work is to allow myself just a small indulgence on YouTube in the morning before I get started on tasks for the day, and then I look up and it’s been hours.

It’s not that I’m unaware of the time passing me by. I fully accept that it’s a choice I’m making. It just so happens to also be a choice that is hard to make to stop yourself from continuing when the cost to switch to work is so high (objectively less enjoyable than watching a video).

Somewhat coincidentally, I just read BJ Fogg’s book Tiny Habits. I didn’t choose it with the explicit purpose of fixing my work productivity; it just happened to be a happy coincidence. I have read a fair number of the self-help books centering around habits. In 2016, I read Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit, Deep Work from Newport, and 7-Habits from Covey; in 2019 I read Atomic Habits from Clear, Mastery from Greene; and in 2021 was The Practice by Godin. At this point, I think I have a pretty good grasp on the common understanding of how behaviour works in the mind, at least as distilled by pop-psychology.

Having said that, I thought Fogg’s book was pretty good. It’s been a while since I read Duhigg and Clear’s books, but while I finished those books feeling like they laid out a decent explanation of a process for changing habits. I felt that Fogg covered the topics in greater depth with more actionable steps. On top of that, Duhigg is a journalist and Clear is a motivational/productivity writer, whereas Fogg is a behavioural scientist. It was super refreshing to have a book entirely based on his work. He avoided having an animated bibliography of summarizing all the work of other people and rehashing old ideas. The anecdotes he included were samples from his own students, which helped give context to the topics he covered.

Finishing this book (especially his section on replacing habits you want to discontinue) made me think of something Ali Abdaal discussed in a recent video on intentional defaults. A lot of my bad habits seem to stem from poor default choices. For instance, when I don’t want to start work, I’ll indulge procrastination by seeing what’s on my YouTube feed. Or when I have a night off, I’ll default to watching television.

Despite these not feeling like a choice, I am still making a choice to do these activities because they are the defaults I have set in those instances. ~When I feel the anxiety associated with work, I default to soothing myself with YouTube.~ Same with downtime at home. Rather than doing something productive, I passively consume because it feels better.

I don’t mean to say that we should maximize productivity at all times. That is a toxic attitude to take.

What I am suggesting is that I should question the process by which I choose to fill my time. When I want to do something productive, say knock off small tasks on my to do list, I approach it as something that needs to be scheduled. That is, I have to think about my time as something I’m earmarking to get stuff done. For instance, my Saturday is free, so I’ll do the laundry, bake some banana bread, etc. I fill that time intentionally.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. I can flip it around and think “I have free time until the next planned thing to do, so what small thing could I do that will help me out?” It might be the case that sometimes I just want to zone out and not think about anything. However, when I do this every time I have free time, it suggests that I’m not choosing how to fill my time but instead am just falling into whatever action will make me feel good in the moment.

I should take the time to reflect meaningfully on my defaults and see if there are better, more fulfilling ways I can occupy my empty time.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Food For Thought – Illusion of Safety

Last week, I shared the insight that brakes enable a car to go faster. This week is a reflection on the issues inherent in progress. I generally assume progress to be a good thing, but it’s important that we critically examine the consequences when we break through barriers.

Brakes allow us to go faster, but this increase in speed means that accidents are likely to be more severe due to the increased forces of collisions. Even when not driving recklessly, the instances where collisions happen means the damage is amplified as a result of speed.

Brakes, and other safety measures, provide an illusion of safety. Because we can brake at greater speeds, we feel safer going faster. Because seatbelts save lives, we are more willing to trust them in a collision. Because helmets protect heads, we are less concerned with impacts during collisions.

I’m only referring to legitimate features that make things safer – there is a whole other conversation to be had around safety theatre (measures that pretend to make us safer but have little actual effect relative to the cost). Things like brakes, airbags, seatbelts, and helmets, are all real ways we can increase safety when we go faster. They are all valuable guardrails to impose to allow us to leverage progress to scale added value. But we must also be mindful that the increases in speed (or other benefits of progress) have commensurate scaling of harm when things go wrong.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Food for Thought – On Self-Discipline

Michael Sugrue recently posted a series of one-liner observations on his YouTube Community page; one of them grabbed a hold of me, and I wanted to share it.

“Brakes make a car go faster: self-discipline produces freedom”

While it reminded me of Jocko Willink’s Discipline Equals Freedom mantra, it still gave me pause to reflect on this quasi-koan. There are two paths for speed – you either are able to control it, or you give over to speed for its own sake. Unless you disregard all safety and practicality, there is little benefit to unrestrained speed or freedom. It is through imposing limits (or the ability to control the forces at play) that you are truly able to take advantage of what speed (or it is a proxy of) has to offer. It is narrow-minded to believe in absolute freedom without guardrails. To believe we should live without restraint is to place yourself and your needs above everyone else. You might win on a few games, but it is a poor strategy in the long term that hurts everyone.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Identifying Areas of Growth

I had my latest performance appraisal last week. I found I had a much easier time identifying areas of growth this time over last year after having gone through an accreditation visit for one of our programs. In the past, I would look at my current skillset, look at the friction points I was experiencing, and project forward a better future based on picking up some new skills or experience. This process is fine, but I realize the flaw is that the path you choose to develop in is not based on experience. It’s a guess about what might be helpful.

Contrast this to going through the accreditation process. To prepare for the performance appraisal, I reviewed the last year’s worth of information (my calendar, my one-on-one meeting notes, and notes I’ve taken about my job) and saw patterns of missed opportunities and under-performance. In these areas, I can reflect and see how if I had more skills or experience in these particular areas, I would have had a better time navigating the issues we faced.

Based on this backwards reflection (rather than guessing or projecting forward), I could more clearly articulate what I’m weak in and where I would gain the highest value in focusing on.

I think this marks for me the formal transition from the “start of career” phase to a more mature “middle career phase.” I have enough work experience and self-knowledge to draw meaningfully from, and that allows me to make smarter choices moving forward.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan