Usually busy again, you must also find your own “white space” time, ask yourself a quality question every day.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “LinkedIn” (ID: LinkedIn- China), the author of the book.
In the book Scarce, author Shafir mentions a very interesting example of the scarcity of time brought by busyness: the consequences:
Imagine having one big and one small box in front of you, you need to put things inside and take the box away.
If you have a big box, then after you have loaded the necessary clothes, luggage and other items, the space will be free.
And if you are unfortunate, you have a small box, then you have to be very careful about the space and keep weighing.
In the end, I found that the box was full no matter how it was arranged, but the things that needed to be carried were still not finished.
After working for a few years, we often find ourselves in such a dilemma: The schedule is filled, but the more busy you are, the less successful you are.
When you encounter a time dilemma,What you need is a “white space” type of efficient work
This time dilemma is something that every one of us will encounter:
We must always weigh what we have to do in the next moment, so the timetable is also full. Because you are too busy dealing with the affairs themselves, you will miss a lot of things that are really important in your work.
This phenomenon is called “talking”.
The so-called peek is to look at things through a tube, things outside the tube are invisible.
For things that are scarce and limited, people are psychologically prone to ignoring the effect, causing individuals to chase excessively, ignoring the overall and long-term judgment.
Here, “Pipe” represents a limited time and scarce wealth, and we become narrow-minded, can’t find real meaning, and have a sense of accomplishment.
Whitke, the author of The Seven Steps of Deep Work, said in the book, Draw a vase on paper, you can talk about the patterns in the painting and the white space on the bottom.And if the picture is completely filled, the whole picture loses its beauty and level.
Fast paced life, 996,007 style of work, how to leave it blank?
I have a very useful little trick that I learned with my former manager:
Her schedule is very full, but no matter how busy she is, she will give herself 30 minutes of blank time every day, no meetings during this time, no phone calls, and It is completely free to arrange by yourself.
Sometimes she will study MBA courses, sometimes reviewing recent work, sometimes just lying down and thinking.
At first, this kind of blank made me feel that my work efficiency will be reduced and I will deal with a lot of things. However, after three weeks of persistence, I found that my ability to solve problems has improved:
Many problems that were not seen before, and those that did not think, emerged because of the deliberate white space.
So, what can we do at the time of the blank?
Try it out,A good question every day
At Yale’s 2019 freshman speech, the principal, Peter Salovey, did not talk about a large section of life, but told the story of the Rabbi of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
He said that Rabbi’s mother, when he was young, did not ask his children for learning after school every day. She only asked him a question:
Are you asking a quality question at school today?
The mother’s question helped him develop the habit of finding good questions, so he noticed a lot of things that he hadn’t noticed before, and began to really think about the inner relationship between things, this can be said Opened a window for his later success in academic research.
And a very good sister I know, at the age of 27, became a senior manager of a foreign company.
When she chatted, I told me that there are often problems in the work. Many times the boss or the predecessor will tell her what methods can’t be done, or what kind of methods must be used.
And her core logic is to ask myself these questions:
Can’t you do it because of objective reasons or subjective reasons? How can it be done? In addition to the well-recognized Plan AIs there Plan B, C, D?
Because she often asks herself about these high-quality issues and digs deep, she can always find a solution that is different.
After the following month, I began to free up half an hour every day to think and ask myself a quality question:
What is the longest time? Is it a human factor or an objective factor? How can I change?
The same thing, why is the effect of small A and small B different? How can I learn?
What business are you doing with my colleagues every day? How can we communicate and cooperate?
……
These questions can be divided into 3 categories for aggregation,
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People:
All questions related to the person doing the work, such as the style of work of the colleague, work preferences, etc.;
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Things:
All the issues of the matter itself, such as the planning of the event, the process, the arrangement, etc.;
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Environment:
The atmosphere of your company, team, guidelines, unwritten rules, and more.
The basic logic of asking yourself a quality question every day is to discover more possibilities in your work.
Imagine, after a while, the people we see every day are the same, the daily tasks are also ruled, and the company’s process is basically the same.
At this time, if you can still find and think deeply about a problem, you can achieve even greater achievements.
How do I ask for quality questions? “5Why Work Method” helps you reach the essence
How do we find “quality issues”? “Quality issues” are different from ordinary ones, and they are valuable and well thought out issues.
When you don’t know what to ask, I recommend using it.The “5Why Work Method” often used in the field finds a quality problem.
The 5Why work method comes from Toyota Saki, which is based on five “why” questions from a question point. Encourage people who solve problems to try to avoid subjective or conceited assumptions and logical traps. Start and find the root cause of the problem.
A classic example: the Jefferson Memorial in Washington Square in 1980, a crack in the wall.
If you just go to the craftsman for repair without thinking, you won’t find the following problem.
The experts thought it was caused by acid rain, and later found that the damage to this memorial was more serious than other buildings. And through the 5Why work method, we can find solutions to this problem:
Why is the Jefferson Memorial more affected by acid rain than other buildings? Because cleaners often use cleaning agents for thorough cleaning.
Why should I clean the walls often? Because there is a lot of bird droppings on the walls.
Why are there so many bird droppings? Because there are many swallows living around the building.
Why are there so many swallows? Because there are many spiders that the swallows love to eat on the wall.
Why are there so many spiders? Because the flying insects breed very fast here.
Why do flying insects breed very fast here? Because a lot of flying insects are attracted by the light of the evening.
And as long as the curtains are pulled before the day is dark, the problem at the Jefferson Memorial is resolved. This story is a classic small case of applying 5why analysis.
And here, the last question:“Why is the flying insect breeding so fast here?” is a quality issue because it points to The final solution.
We can ask ourselves this way at work.
For example, a public relations Wang asks himself:
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Why didn’t I have a sense of accomplishment? Because the working day is still in a state of continuous rotation, it is still busy.
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Why is the daily rotation still busy? Because it is often interrupted, there are always unexpected situations.Now.
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Why are there unexpected situations? Because of the nature of public relations work, there will always be things that need urgent response and handling.
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Why is there something that needs urgent response? Because the company is in the ascendant stage, the media often keeps an eye on it and is under great pressure.
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Why is the pressure so great? Because there is no effective plan, it is often a matter of thinking and then trying to solve the problem.
This way, we have found a solution to the quality problem – need to establish a plan, including a complete response process, personnel allocation in an emergency, etc., rather than letting your work be hit by unexpected situations Broken.
Because you are busy again, you must also find your own “white space” time and ask yourself a quality question every day.
As Yale President Peter Salovey said, all the major discoveries came from problems.
What kind of quality question will you ask tomorrow?