I left for vacation last Wednesday with a stack of work to complete and now I am back to work with that same stack of work but with less time to finish it. I tried to make time for work while I was home but I found myself not wanting to sit at a computer with my family in the background. So I decided to work only on one project during my week off and to work during “convenient” times in the day. But today was my first day back to work and now I still have all the work I left behind and not enough time to finish it all (and an irritating cold).
I usually pride myself in always completing an assignment on time and with high quality but I find that to reach that level of quality, I must invest a large amount of time into my work and the assignment. So what do you do when you don’t have enough time? I don’t think I have the answer to this question. But I know that I thrive in chaos and with low resources. I only hope that I will not forfeit to the limitations of time but find efficient ways to work around it. So I, as get ready to down some medicine and head to the airport to pick up a friend (Tracy Ummel), I only hope that tonight I can find the time and the energy to finish some work and that tomorrow will not be your typical Friday but a day of great accomplishment.
Some of you might hate getting behind on your work or hate the idea of not having enough time but some of you thrive in it. With a deadline in your face, you just seem to hit another gear of focus and determination. You get work done in a day that should have taken a week. But we can all say that it feels good to be done and to feel success. I love to look back at my day and know that I did something, that I accomplished high quality work with limited amounts of time. That is success to me. It could just be the competitiveness in me or the desire for accomplishment, but my best days can be defined around completing a task surrounded by limited resources.
There exist in our lives this concept of diminishing returns with our work or our craft. We can only provide a certain level of quality in our work to a point and then after that point the quality starts to drop. This is the comparison in handling 2 tasks in your day compared to 10. You can produce a high quality product for the first 2 items but after a point (maybe 5 tasks), your quality drops. This is not because you are not good at what you do but because you are surrounded by limited resources like time. Now it is hard to know where that point is found in our work before you actually experience it. Like today, I find myself wondering if I can provide a high-quality product to my boss and to his boss with the lack of time and the stack of additional work that has been added over the last week. The problem doesn’t come from taking on too much work or responsibility but in responding with less quality on your work. When you have too much work, then everything seems to suffer. All of your work will be good but none it if can be great. But there is a spot of maximum efficiency. There is a point on the graph of productivity that equals your maximum output. This point maximizes your limited resources and takes on a high level of responsibility or work but does not sacrifice quality. Each individual has a unique graph because of their unique situation and a different point that illustrates their output. The people that seem to separate themselves from the crowd are the people that understand this and work to uncover their efficiencies and try to improve them. They work hard but are seldom over worked.
Here is a good example: This post is scattered and a random mix of observations and thoughts. Previously, I might have spent time thinking about a good topic and some good points to write about, but I find myself just writing to get it done - I don’t have the time or the ability to make this “great”. I can only hope that this post is good enough. I only see the stack of work on my desk and feel the pressure of the approaching deadlines, and I am unable to devote enough time into this post. I know you are greatly disappointed but this is a true example of me missing my maximum point of productivity. But hopefully I can rearrange the next few days to cover the need of my work and to sacrifice what is needed to meet this deadline with the highest of quality. Even-though, I might be over the point of efficiency, I still believe I can control the outcome or output. So I guess I hope that not only our point of efficiency are different, but that also we can change it when needed…
