Taking My Own Medicine - Limiting My WIP and Keeping My Backlog Manageable
As someone who spends lots of time working with individuals, teams, and organizations to help them examine their flow of work and focus on those things that will truly move the needle in terms of delivering value, I talk about prioritizing what you work on and working on one or two things at a time (with one being better than two). I have seen the magic of what limiting your work in progress (WIP) can do to one’s productivity and throughput. I counsel my clients to keep their product backlogs small and manageable because it encourages prioritizing what is really important, gives them more space to pivot when appropriate, and also makes it less likely that teams will stress out about the growing length of their backlog. Prioritizing your work makes sure you work on the most valuable stuff and then limiting your WIP helps you deliver that valuable stuff as efficiently and quickly as possible.
When I work with my clients, I am actually pretty good about prioritizing my efforts and focusing only on one or two major efforts every day. I’m modeling in a positive way through my behavior, and I am delivering value for my clients as efficiently as possible. So far, so good.
The trouble creeps in when I am in my learner mode. Many of you may be familiar with the Clifton StrengthFinders assessment (now rebranded to CliftonStrengths). My top five strengths from that assessment are: Strategic, Learner, Relator, Achiever, and Input - yes, a little heavy on the strategic thinking domain, but that’s a story for another day. I am pretty comfortable with my strengths and generally view them as very helpful as I set about my daily activity. I love learning about new things and deepening my knowledge in areas in which I already have a good amount of expertise. When I have some time to dedicate to catching up on reading, videos, conference sessions, etc., I am like a child in a candy store. So my Learner “super power” takes flight, mostly shaped by my lean toward the strategic, trying to synthesize what I am reading or observing into higher level thoughts, models, practices, and ideas. This seems to make me a slower reader than I might ordinarily be, but usually pays off in greater impact on how I am able to apply what I have read in a practical and valuable manner. Reading speed is a bit of an obstacle, but still generally positive outcomes here.
That’s when my inner “Input” joins the party. The positive side of “Input” is that you collect information and eventually, at least theoretically, figure out ways to leverage that information. That’s me getting my raw input for those higher level thoughts, models, practices, and ideas that I mentioned above. As with any strength, too much of it becomes a weakness. A different way of looking at my “Input” tendencies is that I have a severe case of FOMO in terms of knowledge and that I am a pack rat seeking out more and more to collect. This causes two problems for me.
First problem - my reading list keeps growing off the charts. People mean well when they are free and generous with their book and reading recommendations, but for those of us a bit touched with Input, that leads to a never ending reading backlog. If I was being transparent with myself, I’d realize I am never reading even a quarter of the books on my list, and I would prune it down to the books that have the best potential impact on me. I need to leverage my “Strategic” super power, determine my learning goals for the month, quarter, etc., and align my reading list with those learning goals, of course revisiting this quite frequently. (Can anyone say “continuous planning”?)
Second problem - I often feel the need to read a book cover to cover - after all, my Input friends, you never know when you are going to miss out on a hidden gem of knowledge if you skip around or stop reading a book before you get to the end. So if I get to a (let’s not call it dry and boring) “difficult” section of a book, my mind drifts over to the physical stack of other books, journals, etc. I have lying around or the digital stack of web reading or webinar viewing on my to do list, I stick a bookmark in my book (I hear bookmarks make the best gifts!), and start to dig into another book or digital reading. That would actually be a good thing to do to move on to something more valuable except that I keep the first book around and mentally plan to go back to that book at some point. What does that leave me with? The answer is a lot of unfinished reading and mental energy committed to future effort - in one word, waste!
Time to take my own medicine. First, I am going to set up a strategic learning plan and review it on a periodic basis to reassess my learning needs. Before I pick up a book, I am going to outline why I am reading it and what I want to achieve by doing so. Then I will time box how long I am willing to commit to reading the book. Once I start reading a book, I will tailor my reading within the book toward the goal I decided upon and once I either achieve that goal, determine that I will never achieve that goal by reading the book, or hit the end of my pre-determined time box, I will stop further reading of the book and move on to the next most valuable thing for me to read. I’m also going to institute a WIP limit for myself to read one item at a time (well, one professional book and one book just for fun).
It will take at least a few months to change my habits, but it will be worth it to claim some time back from mindless activity (i.e., continuing to spend time reading a book just to get to the end of it and check it off my list). Wish me luck!