Do not work hard, work smart!

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No businessman can control the sun or overtime on their working day, you as well as everyone, only 24 hours a day. Success comes from what you can do in these 24 hours. So, don't work hard, work smart !

When you start your day, you can feel comfortable with the tasks set out during the day. The work comes to you with no interest or reason but you still have to do it. You solve the tasks and tasks when assigned and complete it before the deadline.

It seems that you have succeeded because of the deadline-based work arrangement, but the problem is that you don't know how to plan effectively for your day.

Most people "live dead" because of deadlines

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When you are completing certain tasks, the completion time is vital. Many of us run deadlines by working easily in advance to get the feeling of 'completing tasks'. However, sometimes we take too much time on a trivial task and there is no time to finish the remaining important part.

You have about 10 hours of work in a day and need to be as effective as possible. Of course, it was easy to work all day without finally accomplishing anything.

You need to know what is the priority. If you just work hard to make enough hours and complete the deadlines, you may miss important and more valuable tasks.

Too focused on the deadline only brings trouble

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People are not good at estimating any time to complete assignments or projects. It is even more difficult when we develop something new. We are not machines and work efficiency every day can not be as neat as algorithms.

When predicting the completion date of the project, we do not fully anticipate how external factors that do not belong to the project may affect progress such as email, meeting, or inefficient employees. .

We often rely on emotions to work. For example, do you feel you work better on a Friday or Tuesday evening? Time estimates do not include how emotions affect work.

To end it, you can group tasks that are related to each other into a group and complete them all in a different time frame. The speed of rotation, in terms of points, will change with their time frame. Set arbitrary time to complete the task, making it impossible to use velocity as a selling point in group performance, unless your team performs significantly better than competitors. .

How to predict more standard?

Instead of relying on the deadline and completion date to work more effectively, you can apply many other approaches. There is a technique called Scrum that can help you solve this. In the Scrum book : The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time , Scrum technology allows you to make better estimates when planning by using point systems instead of time.

When you are completing a complex project, there will usually be many groups participating. You cannot predict how long it will take to complete the project or convey your team's needs to other groups. Your part in the project may not be much, but the part of the other team needs a lot of effort. You need feedback from all the remaining teams in the project to be able to estimate it most accurately.

Use Story Points

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Story points is simply understood as a unit used to evaluate the effort spent performing a certain task. The more the story point is, the bigger and more time-consuming it is.

The most productive teams have moved from setting deadlines to using task estimation based on a process known as Scrum. They use Story points (input of different teams to join) for each mission to understand their difficulty level.

To assess the difficulty of tasks, people use numbers in the Fibonacci sequence (0; 0.5; 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 8; 13; 20). This causes them to make difficult decisions to assess the hard work they are doing.

They assign the value of Story Point to their part and play a game called 'Planning poker'. In Planning poker, each person will hold a number that they think is equivalent to the difficulty of the project.

Unified opinion

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When the team agreed on the number of Planning poker, the group agreed on the time to implement the project. If the numbers are different, the team needs to discuss to give a single number.

When making our numbers, we don't know what is hindering the work of the other group. This method helps people talk openly about all the team needs to accomplish. Different views help the team to estimate work consistently.

Don't complicate the scale

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The best way is to limit the Story Point to 20 or more if you don't want to make the project more complicated. Any more points than 20 need to split into smaller tasks. The division helps no one to shoulder the overload.

Experience is 20/20

When you are trying to predict how long it will take for a project, don't forget to evaluate based on your own experience. If you've ever done the same job, consider the time to complete and the wrong aspects encountered. Review Story points of those aspects.

The more information you have, the more predictable it is. Besides, you can also improve the previous methods to complete the job more efficiently.

Not a slave for the deadline

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Set the deadline based on the amount of time you estimate yourself, making yourself messy and inefficient. There is no reason to work more when we can work smarter.

By evaluating the work based on the Story Point system instead of the deadline, you can communicate your needs and understand the needs of others more clearly. You will know when to break down tasks into small tasks and recall past experiences more effectively.

This article uses confusing and annoying terms, but if you can understand and still want to read more, buy the Scrum book : The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time !

Refer to some more articles:

1. 7 valuable tips that will change the way you work
2. If you want to be smarter, do 25 things every day!
3. 5 effective ways to help you work smarter

Having fun!