Happy Friday!

A Tale of Two Mornings

It’s morning, and you’re at your wits’ end.

You rushed to the office early today. There are thirty different projects demanding your attention, and if you don’t dive into your work immediately, you’ll never have a prayer of getting through it all.

The proposal for the Jenkins account is due today, so you start with that. Ten minutes in, you remember that you need to have a conversation with Janet before you can finalize the Jenkins proposal. And Janet won’t be in for another hour. That ten minutes of work you just did is useless.

Exasperated, you open up the file for another project. Five minutes into it, you realize that you’ve got at least two hours of research that needs to be done before this can move forward.

So you set that aside. You’re fifteen minutes in, and even though you’ve been hard at work, you’ve got nothing to show for it. And now you have fifteen fewer minutes to accomplish everything, without any sense of what to do next.

“Oh man,” you think, “I really need my coffee,” and you race out of your office, desperate for a dose of caffeine.

Stop. Rewind.

It’s morning, and you’re at your wits’ end.

You rushed to the office early today. There are thirty different projects demanding your attention, but you’ll never have a prayer of getting through it all if you just dive in immediately. You need to take a few minutes to make sense of the work before you start.

You know the Jenkins account is due today, so you consider what steps need to happen to complete it. Talk to Janet first. Right. You schedule that conversation for later that morning.

You cycle through all your day’s projects systematically, spotting what needs to be done when, and what can be postponed. You note one project in particular will require hours of research, and prep to delegate that to your assistant.

Fifteen minutes in, you’re way calmer than when you got to the office, and you know exactly where to start your main work for the day.

“Mmm,” you think, “time for some nice cozy coffee,” and you stroll out of your office, eager for the invigorating aroma of roasting beans.

How’s your day?

Which one of those stories more closely reflects your approach to work?

Most of us recognize the value of planning out our days, but when there’s a lot to get done, our version of triage is to dive directly in and start swinging. The problem is, work is rarely linear. This task relies on that task, which can’t be done until that person talks to those people, and so on. When we plunge headlong into our day’s work, we don’t see those relationships and dependencies, and a lot of our work is pointed in the wrong direction.

But if we establish routines to help guide us—even (especially) in triage situations—we can invest a few minutes that will pay huge dividends in time later in the day.

How do we create those kinds of routines?

Startup, Work, Shutdown

A well-oiled productivity machine is made up of reliable workflows. Every workflow should have three components: Startup, Work, and Shutdown.

Startup is about setting the stage for work, gathering materials, focusing your attention on the work at hand, making sense of where to start.

Shutdown is about saving your place in your work, reopening your awareness to the bigger picture, reconnecting you to the world, and—critically—making future startups easier.

Work is the projects and tasks you engage with.

We’re hesitant to add Startup and Shutdown routines to our work because it feels like, well, more work. And we’re already overwhelmed. Frankly, adding more work sounds insane.

Here are two great reasons you should anyway. First, Startups and Shutdowns make your main Work more efficient and effective. You invest time, but you get it back and then some. Second, Startups and Shutdowns are consistent, which means they are easy to systematize and often automate. As you use them more, they take less of your time and attention to use them effectively.

How can we make use of this Startup-Work-Shutdown pattern?

💡 Make your workflows as easy as 1-2-3 💡

👆 That’s your weekend upgrade.

Audit the workflows in your system to make sure they have (1) Startup, (2) Work, and (3) Shutdown components to them. And you’ll find them everywhere, because this 1-2-3 pattern exists at different “zoom levels” of your system.

Consider your daily workflow. If you (1) begin your days in a consistent way, you’ll be much more effective and efficient with each day’s (2) work. And if you (3) end your days in a consistent way, you will not only have better evenings afterward, but also have easier (1) startups each following day. Which will make tomorrow’s (2) work easier, which makes tomorrow’s (3) shutdown easier, which makes the next day’s (1) startup easier, which… you see where I’m going. The improvement compounds.

What about projects? If you (1) begin work on projects in a consistent way, the flow of (2) work on those projects will be more effective and efficient. And if you (3) shutdown projects by reviewing them for patterns that will help you complete similar projects in the future, guess what? You just made the next project (1) startup easier. Which makes the next project’s (2) work easier, which… you get it: compounding improvement.

All that sounds great, but it’s still generic. Let’s get more specific.

How can Tools for Thought help?

If you’re new to the Weekend Upgrade newsletter, I explore how processes can be created in Tools for Thought (TfTs). TfTs are apps optimized for linking your ideas, thoughts, notes, etc.—apps like Roam Research, Amplenote, Logseq, Obsidian, and Craft.

Let’s focus on one example: daily Startup and Shutdown routines.

As I said above, our Startup goal is to set the stage, gather materials, and focus our attention. My morning routine includes getting my coffee and water, opening up Roam Research (my TfT of choice), processing my Inboxes in case anything in them will change my plan for the day, and then doing my Morning Plan journaling prompts to make sure I’m focused on the most important work for that day.

Our Shutdown goal is to save our place in our work, reorient our awareness to the world, and make future startups easier. My evening routine includes scanning today’s agenda for undone work, entering into Weight Watchers any meals or snacks I forgot to include before, and planning out my agenda for tomorrow.

I list every task in both workflows in Roam Research—unless it’s an automatic habit for me, like getting my coffee and water. And for those actions that are digital, such as setting up tomorrow’s agenda, I look for opportunities to automate them. Because they’re consistent, I can just click a button (“Run Daily Cycle,” being a personal example) and entire sequences happen, saving me several minutes of work.

Customizing your own 1-2-3s

If that sounds good to you (and I promise you, it is!), here’s a step-by-step process to implement a daily Startup and Shutdown in your TfT.

First, ask yourself what helps you get into your work for the day. What processes make it easier for you to focus on your work? And ask yourself what helps you get out of your day? What helps you “close your loops” and prepare for the future? In your TfT of choice, list these Startup and Shutdown actions in a daily template.

Then, work for a couple of weeks with your new Startup and Shutdown routines. See how they impact the work you do. Take notes on what works. Take notes on what doesn’t. Iterate, adjust, adapt.

Finally, once you have consistent workflows that you like, look for opportunities to automate them. For example, if staging tomorrow’s agenda is part of your Shutdown routine for the day, see if there’s a way to automate the first few steps of that.

Think in terms of mise-en-place, discussed in detail in the book Work Clean by Dan Charnas. What do you need to do at the beginning of your day so everything is in its place when you start working? What do you need to do at the end of your day so everything is in its place when you arrive tomorrow? List them, iterate them, and where possible, automate them.

What do I do next?

1. Take 2 minutes and answer this question: What’s one thing I learned in this newsletter that I can put into practice right away?

By committing to a specific action, you make it much more likely you’ll do it.

2. Over the weekend, list the actions you can take at the start of your day to make today easier, and the actions you can take at the end of the day to make tomorrow easier.

Once you have your lists, put them into a daily template and see how they work!

If this was valuable for you:

Share the newsletter with someone you think would also get value from it! https://rjn.st/weekend-upgrade-newsletters​

Until next time, friends:

Make your workflows as easy as 1-2-3!

​

R.J.

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