Save energy by thinking in Modes
The Customer Centred Innovation Map is a great tool to analyse the work you do as well as the work your customers do. It makes you think about the whole journey from start to finish to complete a task. Here are the basic steps:
- Define - Plan the task
- Locate - Get all the items/data to do the task
- Prepare - Get the environment ready to do the task
- Confirm - Check you are ready to start the task
- Execute - Do the task
- Monitor - Is the task being done correctly?
- Modify - Make changes to improve the execution of the task
- Conclude - Finish the task
Adding time boxes in your diary is a real productivity boost when you have tasks that are complex enough that they follow the steps above. For example if you have 5 reports and each one needs research, add a time box to do research for all the tasks. If you are in Research Mode then doing all research at once will skips steps above (such as step 3).
Time boxing happens in agile practises as properly defining tasks is done ahead of a sprint rather than starting a sprint then creating specs. We are going one step further and doing the same step across all tasks at once.
Switching between Modes uses up time and energy as you need to reset and get yourself ready to move into the next Mode. Batching up all the work for each Mode will keep you in flow for longer.