Think Inside The Box, Part 3: Tools

In our last two posts, we dis­cussed how experts work­ing in one busi­ness could launch new advi­sory busi­nesses by “think­ing inside the box” instead of out­side it, as most peo­ple suggest.

I’m not crit­i­ciz­ing outside-the-box think­ing because it is needed for cre­ativ­ity, inno­va­tion, and rein­ven­tion. But when you’re in the process of tran­si­tion, you really don’t have that much time for grand vision­ary think­ing. Rather, you need to per­form in one role, and envi­sion in another.  And to do that you need  to learn to switch your mind quickly from role to another.

So today, in this post, we’ll exam­ine the nuts and bolts of how you can do that.  Here’s the nitty-gritty of mul­ti­ple role tasking.

Sched­ule rigorously

Most of us hate sched­ul­ing, which is why we fall off the grid often. Sched­ules make us feel like we’re restricted, con­strained, and  mech­a­nized, less human some­how.  But when you’re over­taxed, sched­ules do keep you from wast­ing pre­cious time. And, if viewed as a tool and not  a prison sen­tence,  they can improve your life considerably.

When launch­ing a busi­ness, you must clearly deter­mine how many hours need to be devoted to  “doing”, i.e. pro­duc­ing  in your job or busi­ness , and how many hours should be des­ig­nated for  think­ing, dream­ing, and plan­ning your new advi­sory business.

Depend­ing on how your mind works, this can mean daily, or hourly, seg­ments, and should include time you can “steal” from some other time bloc. The impor­tant point is that YOU – and not your clients, or co-workers or any­one else who will make demands on your time– have to deter­mine what works best.

One point you should be very care­ful about: No mat­ter how much time you sched­ule for one role or the other, don’t let one role bleed into the other. When that hap­pens, every­thing starts to get mixed up, and noth­ing is done well. You’ll find you’re con­stantly behind, and fran­tic, so keep the lines clear. If you don’t get it all done in time …. well … so what?

The point here is that much-ballyhooed “mul­ti­task­ing” doesn’t work because you can’t con­cen­trate on two things at the same time. But ser­ial task­ing works very well, because you can switch your mind from one sphere to another. You may need a few min­utes to tran­si­tion, how­ever, so, when you fin­ish one task, take a break, go for a walk or some­thing to clear your mind, and then come back to the new task.
Be flex­i­ble

Ok, this is where time man­age­ment tools are good aids. If you try to keep all these sched­ules in your head or in one place, you’ll prob­a­bly for­get them. I don’t know about you, but I have a ten­dency to get so involved in some­thing, I don’t even know where I am some­times.  So (co-ordinated) mul­ti­ple sched­ules and logs work for me.
After you’ve divided up your time between dif­fer­ent roles,  form task sched­ules for each of them. But be flex­i­ble in them. If you sched­ule your­self to the minute, as per a sched­uler, you’ll likely break the bound­aries often, which leads to frus­tra­tion and even­tual aban­don­ment.  So put in the sched­ule a buffer between each of role or task. This may mean you won’t accu­rately use one of those per­fectly orga­nized sched­ules, with every minute accounted for. But the pur­pose isn’t to pass an exam on sched­ul­ing, is it? Lose the aim to be per­fectly cor­rect, and use what works.

This buffer is very impor­tant if you are try­ing to take on dif­fer­ent roles in the same day, or in times chunks that abut each other. Buffers will allow you to turn off one part of your brain and turn on another.

Keep logs

For each role you’re occu­py­ing, keep run­ning logs of what’s been done, and what needs to be done. And sketch out a few notes on how you felt while doing the task,  so that you can find areas of improve­ment, or areas you need to work on. This is a won­der­ful way to rec­og­nize your strengths and weak­ness and work on them.

You can do this elec­tron­i­cally in one of the many note-taking soft­ware vehi­cles out there, or, if your mind works that way, on paper in var­i­ous note­books. Each evening, orga­nize the next day’s tasks, and pri­or­i­tize them. We all have a ten­dency to overdo plan­ning, so attack the pri­or­i­ties first, because likely that’s all you’ll be able to get done.

A very impor­tant part of keep­ing logs is the idea log. As you’re work­ing, ideas will con­tin­u­ally flood into your mind, often about some­thing in the other role. The brain likes to cor­re­late infor­ma­tion to all the tasks it has to man­age,  so these cross-functional ideas will hap­pen.  But if you stop to think about them, you’ll lose your focus and start drift­ing. So, jot them down in an idea log and get back to the task at hand. Then, at the end of each day, put them in a big­ger idea log cre­ated for spe­cific roles, or pursuits.

Idea logs are also good tools to use for the var­i­ous down times you have (I hope) built into each day. When you’re exer­cis­ing, or hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion,  or sim­ply wind­ing down, keep the log handy. You can record infor­ma­tion for fol­lowup, or jot down what­ever comes into your mind.

Another  idea log­ging tool, taken from cre­ativ­ity facil­i­ta­tion, is to force your­self into idea gen­er­a­tion and keep a kind of white board of the results in your note­book. But we’ll get into that in another post.

Share your thoughts

In these three posts, there has been a con­sid­er­able amount of infor­ma­tion regard­ing how an expert can switch from one busi­ness to another. But, it’s not per­fect, and prob­a­bly isn’t enough.

I’m sure many of you are also strug­gling with this, and have devised var­i­ous forms of cop­ing. I’d like to hear them.

Shar­ing tech­niques, suc­cesses and fail­ures is an impor­tant aspect of com­mu­nity, so I encour­age you to please post your thoughts here. Oth­ers may learn from them.