Bonus edition: Processes & structures for working smarter, not harder.
First - thank you for (financially) supporting us over at Nice Work! We love what we’re doing and loving hearing your stories about how this weekly newsletter is inspiring big and small career and workplace moves.
We’re emailing you again because, in this week’s earlier newsletter, we shared some tools + apps that making working smarter easier.
But there’s more you can do - no app subscription required. Instead, try on these processes and structures and see if any of them can help lighten your workload.
Read on! 💜
✅ Our Favorite Processes + Structures
Tips and tricks for making work easier without having to subscribe to anything.
Put instructions in all of your files, emails and messages.
Imagine - you have created The Best Work Thing™ ever today, and you’ve sent it off to the person next in charge of it. Yay - you’re done!
Until they email back within 5 seconds asking:
1) what it is
2) what they need to do with it now
3) how much time they can have with it now, and
4) what they need to do with it when they’re done doing whatever it is they need to do with it.
The best part is: They never send these questions all at once. It is almost ALWAYS messaging ping-pong and it will be the day you’re off to a Beyonce concert that they decide to ask all these questions AFTER work hours. So, so, so fun.
To avoid this productivity-killing ping-ping, always make sure in your documents / emails that you have a “Next Steps” section that says:
What the Best Work Thing™ is
What they need to do with it
By when
And then, when they are done, what you + they or someone else will need to do with it.
For example, we work with our clients to help them answer questions to journalists. We would say:
Hi Jane, Thank you for providing your thoughts on these questions on Important Topic from Journalist. Here’s our recommended edits to your answers. Please review and send back any final changes by today at 4pm CET and send it back to us so we can send it along to Journalist before their deadline. If you cannot review before that time or want to make more significant changes that need more time, we will still email Journalist at 4pm CET and let them know you are still working on it and ask for an extension. If they cannot make an extension work, we will save your answers and use them for a future article/piece/Best Work Thing™. Thanks!
What’s also great in this system is you’ve already decided for yourself what you’re doing next + when. Way less questions, way less to think about after work. Go enjoy that concert.
