🚀 The secret to standing out at work
How to make your boss see your value
“Workaholics aren't heroes. They don't save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is home because she figured out a faster way.”
- Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson in ReWork
When I was a student at Oxford University, the phrase "work smarter, not harder" finally clicked for me.
Each week, we’d get a massive reading list to supplement what we learned in lectures. It was impossible to read everything, and I felt like I was constantly playing catch-up. I pulled several all-nighters trying to get through the material, but often didn't even make it halfway through the list.
Frustrated, I turned to a classmate a few years senior for advice. John was doing several extra-curricular activities and still consistently achieved high exam scores.
"You don't need to read through everything," John said. "Start by looking at the exams and your essay questions. Then work backward to figure out what you need to focus your reading and studying around."
In my current job working for - apparently - the world’s most-followed productivity expert Ali Abdaal, "work smarter, not harder" is constantly emphasized. Every six weeks, we spend at least a few days planning what we'll work on in the following six weeks (our "quest"). The point of "quest-planning" is to find activities that would help the company reach its goals. We plan individually for one day. Then we present our plans to the team for collective feedback.1
I'm fortunate to work in a company that encourages us to find needle-moving activities so that we avoid doing “pointless work”. Sadly, “pointless work” is a pretty common phenomenon. According to a global survey by Asana, employees say they waste more than 5 hrs per week (= 6 working weeks per year) doing “work about work” (like duplicate tasks and pointless meetings).
In the rest of this newsletter, we'll cover a simple 5-step framework to help you work smarter, not harder. The 5-step framework is summarized by the acronym CD-ROM.
Step 1. Company
The first step is to write down your company's priorities. These priorities should be pretty clear and are usually written alongside the company's mission statement. Ask yourself the following questions:
What are the top-level strategic objectives for your company this year?
What projects get the most visibility, funding, or tend to be prioritized in meetings?
What does the most senior person in the company talk about in conversations or press/company statements?
Step 2. Direct manager
The second step is to write down your direct manager's priorities. These priorities are likely to be less obvious than company objectives and unlikely to be written down somewhere. So you'll need to do some inferring and reflecting. Ask yourself the following questions:
How is your direct manager's performance measured? What would help get your direct manager promoted?
What do they spend time on or talk about?
What tasks or projects do they tend to prioritize over others?
Based on your answers to these questions, make a list of “high-priority” and “low-priority” areas.
Step 3. Resources
The third step is to figure out how you can contribute to the priorities. Ask yourself the following questions:
What can I do better than my colleagues?
What kind of work makes me feel energized after I’ve done it?
What kind of work produces the highest ratio of satisfaction to the amount of time spent?
Step 4. Overlap
The fourth step is to find the overlap between your answers to steps 1, 2, and 3. This is your zone of potential impact. Ask yourself:
How does your current work contribute to the priorities? (If your work doesn’t contribute, why not?)
What needs to happen for your work to overlap with high-priority rather than low-priority areas? Do you need to be shifted to a different team? Put on a different case or project?
Out of the priorities you identified in steps 1 and 2, which areas can you make a noticeable contribution?
Step 5. Message
Craft a short message to your boss. You are drafting a script so that when there's an opportunity to discuss the direction of your work, you know what to say.
Your goal in this step is to show the alignment with your work plans and what your boss/company wants. You want to let them know that you are the how to their what.
This message should be a pithy statement summarizing
Your awareness of what the top priorities are
What you plan to work on
How this work will help your direct manager and company achieve their top priorities
(If needed) A request for permission to work on this task
For example:
"I'm aware that our top priority this quarter is to increase customer renewals. I'm going to make some profiles of our different customer segments. I believe this will help us better understand what they want and help reduce churn."
"I know we're trying to increase our annual revenue by 50% this year. I'm going to do some market research to see what we can add to our product range. Or whether we can increase price of existing products while staying competitive. One of these options could be a path to our objective."
"I understand that one of our top objectives this month is to hire a social media manager. I'm going to arrange a meeting with Betty to discuss what requirements we want this hire to have. This will allow me to craft a job description that increases our chances of finding the right person."
Everyone can gain from working smarter rather than harder:
It prevents burnout. One big contributor to burnout is working hard on the wrong thing. Workers in the US reported experiencing burnout 2.3 times on average in the past year, and 40% of workers globally believe burnout is an inevitable part of success.
You can make an impact. By working on the most needle-moving things, you create value for your organization.
You gain the reputation of someone who makes an impact. By creating value, your boss is more likely to see you as a partner rather than just an employee. You get to take on bigger projects and leadership roles.
Another phrase that Ali is fond of is: “What’s effective isn’t always efficient”. Taking a few minutes away from “business-as-usual” (BAU) to plan how to spend your time might not feel efficient. During busy periods, we often think "I can't afford this planning time." But this planning time is likely to make you more effective in the long run. You might discover that your BAU activities aren't the most effective way of getting things done.