A case for abolishing routines
Yesterday, I was walking the dog to Coles to pick up groceries and I thought “what a typical and boring day”. In fact, most of my week had followed this routine and thinking.
I remember thinking back to the weekend prior, talking to my cousin at a niece’s 1st birthday party, who was astounded when I explained I’m a physicist. He remarked how amazing my typical day must be compared to someone doing mundane officework. But in reality I had settled into such a routine myself that I was the one doing mundane officework.
Reading a paper, sitting in on a meeting, then lunch, and so on.
Not exactly the exciting life of a physicist this week.
Upon reflection of the week, not only was it mundane, but I also didn’t accomplish much. And now I’m thinking the mundane activities and lack of notable progress must be correlated.
10x work
Think back to the most productive and interesting day of work you’ve had in the last year. It probably doesn’t fit very neatly into your day-to-day routine does it?
There’s something exceptional about these days that feel like we’ve done 10x the work of a normal day, but where does it come from?
It doesn’t come from some grind. Working 60 hours/week vs the typical 40 hours/week is, at best, a 1.5x increase. Very far from the 10x days.
The 10x work comes from impact. For example, when new information leads to a rapid response or change in direction, when you inject more risk or take on tasks with high variance outcomes, when you step outside of routine.
Determining valuable work
If you were to make a list of the thousands of tasks you’ve accomplished in the last year, how many of them actually made a significant impact?
A good place to look for ideas is your resume, assuming its somewhat up-to-date, or a cover letter you’ve used to apply for your current position or an upcoming one.
What are the things on there you’re highlighting? Its probably not your ability to reply to emails in a timely manner, or how you’re attentive in meetings. It’s most likely a list of your greatest and most impactful achievements of the last few years. The 10x work.
My cover letter, for example, highlights:
a recent paper I’m proud of,
my commercialisation project,
my network and multi-disciplanary collaboration efforts,
and my knowledge and area of expertise.
While many of these took time to build, the greatest progress was not made whilst sticking to a predetermined routine but instead over a few very impactful days.
Take my PhD for example, all the data that made it into my papers could be condensed into a few months of work. So what the hell did I do for the other 3.5 years? To be honest, a lot of it is wasted time since at that level you simple don’t know what you should be doing day-to-day. But beyond the PhD, now I can reflect on that period as a case study for identifying the difference between 1x work and 10x work, the difference between the unimportant tasks and the impactful ones.
The 10x plan of attack
Reflect on this past week, month, year and categorise the 1x, 2-5x, and 10x tasks you’ve accomplished.
1x work: remove/delegate/automate. Cancel the bottom 20% of your meetings, reply to emails in windows, etc. There’s plenty of ideas online about this stuff.
2-5x work: do this. It’s still “work”, but ensure it at least aligns with your career plans. Don’t get bogged down on it though.
10x work: optimise and maximise. With the free time you’re saving by removing/delgating/automating your 1x tasks, be sure to fill it with value. Remember this isn’t about some grind, this is taking an extra 20 minutes in your lunch break because someone important to your network has entered the cafeteria, pursuing a research project unrelated to your daily work for the opportunity to learn something new, starting a commercialisation project.
What about my mundane week?
After a mundane week, and Thursday scheduled to read some papers while the lab was down, I decided to say stuff it and tread a different path.
I booked a meeting for the afternoon with my old superviser to discuss a commercialisation project idea I’ve been thinking of for a while now but have not been actioning because I’m “too busy” with 1x tasks.
I spent the morning preparing some slides and doing some research on the market opportunity and funding plan.
Ultimately, the discussion felt extremely succesful and we created further action items that also won’t fit neatly into my day-to-day routine.
Was it a 10x work day? Only time will tell if it was a waste or the start of a mulit-million dollar company, but at least I’ve opened the door to that possibility.
The PhD Pocket Guide
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