Working 85 Hours A Week Is Not Productive, It's A Symptom

Posted: September 1, 2014

l feel really good: my mind feels stretched, my capacity feels stretched, like i just finished a breakthrough workout. I came out of a training and for a few weeks now i’ve wanted to just sit down and have a really good Weekly Review right after this particular training because my mind is racing, i am feeling really creative, and ultimately I want to start applying the tools i’ve been learning. Over the last few weeks when looking at the margins, i have only applied the most rudimentary planning in favor of completing work.

Today, at the end of a short week, i am feeling the pressure of a shorter week. I have items that need to get done. Some are rather large. However, I need to invest the time in communicating. There are a few takeaways that i want to remember here:

Working 85 hours weeks is a symptom of:

• poor planning
• poor communication
• poor stakeholder management
• period.

The cure is appropriate planning, tempered by marginal analysis of the trade off between planning and execution; ering on over-communication with a clear communication plan, & excellent stakeholder management.

Looking at my Asana, it looks like i havn’t done a full Weekly Review since 8/10. That is almost a month. I’ve been more productive in this last month. I feel like I have been a lot more productive but, it has been at the expense of visibility, even my own. I don’t remember what all i did. I need a way to automate parts of my communication process.