Overwhelmed? Use the Four D’s to Move Projects Forward
By Mikhail Vyrtsev
You’ve got the same 24 hours as Beyoncé. Yet somehow she accomplishes far more in a typical day; at any given time, she’s effortlessly moving multiple priorities forward (albums, tours, media, shows, business, philanthropy, marriage, motherhood, and more). Even Beyoncé knows that she doesn’t have the capacity to do everything herself, alone, though. There’s only so much that you, as one person – with the mere 168 hours afforded to you each week – can accomplish by yourself.
Jackie Bavaro, Product Manager at Asana, suggests that there are four ways to spend less time on priorities that you simply don’t have the capacity for:delete it, defer it, delegate it, or diminish it:
Delete it: …It can feel scary to say no, but picking the work you won’t do is just as important as picking the work you will do. If a teammate gave you a responsibility that you don’t believe is the best use of your time, make sure to let them know that you won’t be doing it anymore. Try showing them your pie charts to give them context on why you would like to delete this task, rather than just saying ‘no.’
Defer it: If you don’t have time now, but will in the future, deferring a responsibility is an excellent option…Setting a reminder makes it easier for you to not feel stressed about the work while it’s deferred.
Delegate it: For responsibilities that still need to get done, evaluate if it can be reassigned to another teammate. Delegation works best when you can hand a responsibility over completely — now the teammate you delegated to can own both the ‘boring’ and cool parts of the project, and can take pride in seeing it through to completion.
Diminish it: When you really want to own a responsibility yourself, you can find ways to reduce the time you spend on the work. You can reduce the scope of the work, for example, only tackling the highest priority pieces. You can also stop working when your output is good, rather than perfect.
There’s simply no immunity from the paralyzing procrastination that comes with staring up at daunting tasks, no matter how focused and driven you are. The larger and more intimidating the priority, the more likely you are to conjure up excuses to slow your start. And the more time you spend trying to prioritize things, the less time you actually have to move them forward.
The (desired) byproduct of being good at what you do, is that you’ll get more to do. Beyoncé can only sing, dance, and be a boss within the same finite temporal constraints as yours. But even she has to turn things down or hand them off. Then, and only then, can she focus on moving her enterprise forward. No matter the size of the project, when relevant tasks come onto your plate that you simply don’t have the capacity for, remember the Four D’s: delete, defer, delegate or diminish.
