The blog

For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

The ​“modes” of your work

What par­tic­u­lar­ly stuck with me – and that more peo­ple would ben­e­fit from doing – was that he had described what applies in the dif­fer­ent ​“modes” he has at work. For him, for exam­ple, these are:

• Exe­cu­tion mode

• Han­dling mode (for new, incom­ing matters)

• Plan­ning and reflec­tion mode

For me, it can also be:

• Trav­el mode

• Around lec­ture mode (about 1 hour before and after a lec­ture or course)

For each mode, he described the pur­pose of the mode, that is, what he should pri­mar­i­ly focus on then. I will allow myself to quote him from the plan­ning and reflec­tion mode:

“Ensure that the cal­en­dar, projects and tasks are in sync, that noth­ing is lost and that I active­ly improve my struc­ture and my ways of working.”

This is how you work

After that, he pin­point­ed how he wants to work in a struc­tured way in each mode. When I do this for the exe­cu­tion mode, it sounds like this:

• I work as focused as I can on the task that is cur­rent­ly the high­est priority
• The phone is placed where I can­not see it
• I refrain from fetch­ing new emails
• At least once an hour, I take a short break when I stand up and do some­thing com­plete­ly different
• If it is a day when I need it, I lis­ten to the kind of music that, on that par­tic­u­lar day, makes the work easier
• … and so on

Mikael empha­sized to me that what is described is not nec­es­sar­i­ly how he man­ages to work every day, in every mode, but it is a clear descrip­tion of the ide­al way of work­ing he strives for in his refine­ment of structure.

The struc­ture takes shape

I think this is excel­lent. If you cre­ate such a clear pic­ture, you can more eas­i­ly see where you need to fine-tune your way of work­ing next. When you pick up a new trick or idea, here in the week­ly newslet­ter, for exam­ple, you have a bet­ter place to note it than just putting it in the back of your mind and hop­ing you will adopt what you have come up with.

Do this

1. Think about which dif­fer­ent ​“modes” you have in your work.
2. For each one, describe your pri­ma­ry focus for that par­tic­u­lar mode.
3. List how you want to work in each mode. What rules do you want to fol­low? What bound­aries do you want to stay with­in then? What do you want to refrain from doing in that par­tic­u­lar mode?
4. Save your descrip­tion of your struc­tured way of work­ing, where you keep oth­er instruc­tions, quick ref­er­ence guides and rou­tine descriptions.
5. When you feel that your way of work­ing has dete­ri­o­rat­ed and you have fall­en out of good habits, take a look at what you pre­vi­ous­ly described. See where your way of work­ing today dif­fers from how you once decid­ed to work.
6. Define one con­crete thing you will do to get back on track. Do it right away or put it on your to-do list.

Your own tem­plate to follow

If you define how you work in a struc­tured way, your struc­ture can last longer. You have a tem­plate to fol­low, and you can make the adjust­ments need­ed at any time to have a work sit­u­a­tion you are com­fort­able with.

How do you do it?

Have you also made a sim­i­lar descrip­tion of how you work in a struc­tured way, as Mikael did? What did you describe in it? I am curi­ous to hear, so write to me and tell me.

(Speak­ing of struc­ture — here are my tips on build­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty into your struc­ture so you can more eas­i­ly han­dle the shifts and sur­pris­es of every­day life!)