Ideas, tasks and projects
I don't recall the specific search term I used, but it must have been related to productivity and organisation because I was looking for tips on how I can be more effective at work. The video I landed on was 4 Things I Did to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed At Work by Layla at ProcessDriven.
It's easy to fall into a spiral of consuming productivity videos on YouTube resulting in being ironically unproductive. To avoid this, I decided to write a post to capture some learnings. The main takeaway for me was a method for defining ideas, tasks and projects. I find this useful because it provides a way to determine if something is ready to work on, in other words, if it's a task. The table below illustrates this idea.
In order for your activity to be considered a task you need have one observable outcome, an assigned owner, a commited deadline, and it needs to be possible to complete in one work session. If you can't complete in one work session it becomes a project, and if all you have is one observable outcome, then you have an idea 💡
One observable outcome
This should be something tangible as a result of your activity. For example; by the end of the work session I will have reviewed my colleagues pull request and made any relevant comments for them to address.
One assigned owner
The idea is that one owner should drive the task to completion. This doesn't necessarily mean that only one person works on this, but, there is less confusion on who is accountable for the progress of the task.
One committed deadline
Without a deadline, it's difficult to prioritise one thing over another. Setting a target date is a useful tool to help make the urgency of the task more apparent.
One work session
According to the video, a work session is typically around 20 minutes on average. This should be considered when capturing the task and helps you to focus on what the outcome at the end of the session should be.