Last Saturday, I woke up in the middle of night at 3 am, confused. I dreamt that my non-profit team manager was complaining to my PhD supervisor about some work conflict in the company I volunteered at.
So two things were clear - (1) My work(s) was hindering my health (again), which is not a good sign at all, and (2) I was multitasking too much and I needed a structure to manage the limited time (resources) I had in 24-hrs-day. So, I took out my bedtime-notes notebook (yes, I keep one for badly-sleeping days) and started scribbling it with the words which were messing up my head. And I added some bubbles, for well, just some nice effects.
Below you will find many of my scribbles, but here you can find a sheet/ tool here as well - which you can download and get going to push you multi-tasking creativity!
It was all over the place, and no doubt I was not able to sleep well. But at least I had some big words floating in my head - on a piece of paper. So I took a glass of water, sipped it down, and went back to bed with a little bit of relief.
But there was still a lingering thought which kept me restless - why am I doing these multiple tasks - and does it mean that it is coming at the cost of creativity in one or many tasks - because I did not have enough time? But this was a question for the next morning.
Move Bubbles to Actions
Next morning, after 3 hrs of therapeutic cleaning of the house, I decided to sit down with these bubbles. The first step was to associate them to something more concrete - something I could comprehensively analyse - and the best way was to start with the current set of concrete actions I do everyday. So, I started adding actions in the current set of bubbles.
Move Actions to Priorities
Also, I had to be aware I was very limited in my personal resources - basically, time. So added to these actions, I needed a clear idea of what I prioritized the most - but given my background as an extremely curiosity-driven person (saying yes to anything which looked new and shiny) - this was not an easy step. Basically, it demanded discipline of choices, which I mostly lack.
I approached priorities in two ways - (1) ranking the entire cluster (bubble) of actions - what was most important to me (2) what was drop-able inside each of these clusters, keeping in mind resource constraints. So I also started ranking them internally in the clusters.
Move Priorities to Domains
Though I was able to rank them, I could still see that some of them had very clear similar priorities - but they belonged to different domains of actions. For example, I was very clear that some of these actions were focused on my skill development, while some of them were focused to help develop my knowledge in the sector/ industry I work in.
Move domains in Skills/ Sectors (S2)
So the first step was to separate these prioritized actions into separate sets of engagements in either sectoral-development or skill-development. Note, ‘development’ is a word I use for something which is also steady in nature - e.g. your current job can just be our ‘development’ in your sector, and not mostly challenging your skills.
Sometimes, it is both challenging your sectoral and skill-knowledge, and then you can add them in both the segments - but be clear on adding the knowledge which this job hones in the sector segment, and the skills which the job nurtures in the skill segment!
Also, sometimes, e.g. in my case, you might be engaged in more than one sector and you might have a common set of skills across them, so be creative and practical on how to add it in your chart.
Move domains to Product/ People/ Push (P3)
Now that I had clearer priorities and actions, I went back to the lingering question and challenge of creativity while multitasking. For that I needed to clearly know which set of prioritised actions I could push more, and if I could push them, what was the tool to do so. Was it through people/network-activities or through a product/service?
But before that, I had to be clear how my current network (people) and current knowledge and expertise (product or service, I was engaged in) was equipping me towards it.
I call this simple table as P3S2 - Product and People across Sector and Skills -> to define your Push! Overall, this tool has helped me to categorise my efforts in different activities I multitask - and thus understand best, how and where I want to push my creativity. Hope it helps you too!