Work Smarter, Not Harder
Hey!
Welcome back to another week of musings.
This past week has been very hot, and I had migraine due to
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Things I discovered in the past week
- These past few weeks, I've been thinking about processes and what is required and not so required. I came across value-stream mapping. I've been making diagrams of the processes I care about.
- This episode about how Canva works was really interesting! From having coaches instead of managers to their intentional approach to include AI in their product.
Over the last few weeks, work has become very hectic, and the workload has increased out of nowhere. I think that's part of the natural ebbs and flows of work, but now that it's returning to "normal" levels and I'm in a more stable mental headspace, I keep thinking about "working smarter, not harder."
Experience-based
One thing about that quote is that working smarter tends to happen after working hard and understanding the work deeply.
In short, you must have enough experience to understand what "working smarter" looks like. This translates to reaching a level where the day-to-day tasks become second nature.
Shu-ha-ri
During past periods of increased workload, I came across this Japanese concept of Shuhari.
These concepts explain pretty well what we're discussing here:
- shu - "obey": follow the established process
- ha - "detach": once you understand what is happening, break the rules
- ri - "separate": at a level of expertise, make your own rules or process.
Difficult in transitions
Another concept you come across while dealing with working smarter is the Peter Principle
...people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence."
This principle talks about how a person who is proficient at their job gets promoted to a job that requires a different skill set. If the person doesn't adapt, they will never get promoted again.
I've felt this way multiple times during my career, either switching roles, like from dev to DBA or staff engineer.
During these transitional periods, you need to grasp what skills you have, what skills are needed, and how you will close the gap. In some cases, it might be more straightforward; hard skills to learn. In other cases, it might be harder; "learn how to influence others".
Setup systems
One thing that has helped me has been setting up systems that help when the work scales up or down.
I've seen people have a rule of thumb based on the impact a given task will have. Lately, I've also categorized tasks based on whether they need my "unique" skills—like, is this something only I can do, or can anyone do it?
Another thing that helps is categorizing how much you need to be present at some task, like do I need to help set the foundation, do I need to keep tabs on people, or be actively taking some tasks.
Learn to adapt
Since transitional periods, jobs, responsibilities, etc, look different from job to job and company to company, the best skill to have is to be adaptable and learn to take less time to understand the gap you need to cover regarding skills.
One book I tend to recommend to people going through promotions is to read The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins. It talks about a systemic approach to getting up to speed when you're promoted, or you have a new job.
Your turn!
Let me know how you work smarter. Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by work? Let me know by replying to this email!
Happy coding!
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