Chunking Can Save You Vast Amounts of Time
If a typical picture is worth 1,000 words, the image below may be worth 1,000 days' worth of saved time over the course of your career.
Until I saw this graphic, created by Ozana Giusca at the Tooliers blog, I always thought of "chunking" merely as a tactic for overcoming difficult obstacles. It turns out I was thinking too small.
Ozana proposes that you consciously chunk tasks both up and down (see her original article). Let me explain with a few personal examples.
As a writer, I've watched with dismay as English teachers have taught my kids to write (ridiculously short) papers by breaking up the process into 20 or 30 steps. This week, my 14-year-old son has an assignment to create a plan for writing a paper. He will never actually write the paper; his entire assignment is simply learning to plan how to write a paper.
Now I realize that the teachers are showing students how to take a challenging task and chunk it down into many pieces. You keep chunking a difficult task into smaller and smaller pieces, until each piece becomes manageable.
But once you master a task, chunking it down is a waste of time and effort. Instead, you should chunk familiar tasks up, until a 30-step process becomes a single task, or something close to it.
For example, I write one or two dozen articles a week; there is no way I could do this if each article required 30 steps. In many cases, I get - or am given - an idea, and simply sit down to write the piece. Idea, write, proof. That's three steps.
When I take on the challenge of writing a book - a dramatically larger challenge than an article - I chunk down. For example, I might seek to write 1,500 words per day, or to come up with five useful pieces of research in an early morning session.
Chunking can also be a wise strategy in a group setting. Imagine that your team has to introduce a new product or start using new software; it makes sense to chunk each of these innovations down into a series of highly detailed procedures. But as everyone gets comfortable, you will want to chunk up and start eliminating the lion's share of these baby steps.
Chunking saves you time in two ways.
First, if you try to tackle a large challenge without chunking it down, you risk failing repeatedly, or quitting before you succeed.
Second, if you fail to chunk up once you master a task, you are taking far too long to perform functions that should be done with barely any thought.
To translate this idea into action, today try to look at everything you do through a "chunking" lens. Which tasks should you chunk up, and which need to be chunked down? I'd love to hear about your experiences with chunking in the Comments section below.
Bruce Kasanoff is a ghostwriter for entrepreneurs, executives and social innovators. Learn more at Kasanoff.com. He is the author of How to Self-Promote without Being a Jerk.
Images: KJGarbutt/Flickr (top); Ozana Giusca (chunking)
Sabbaticalist & Succession Architect | Collaboratively Co-Design and Curate Immersive Leadership Experiences for Resilient People & Organizations | Author: A Traveler's Guide to Leadership & Life (Work In Progress)
10 年Great #chunking #framework to increase #speed & #focus Another chunking use is 4 activities my #dailyRitual = reflection/meditation/exercise provides a sense of accomplishment & balance throughout my day
Quantum Coach | Empowering Individuals to Live Authentically, Break Free from Limitations, and Find Their Inner Power | Founder of BeYouBeFree | 2x Best Selling Author | International Speaker & Entrepreneur
10 年Chris Hunter Since I am the author of the original article, I will answer your comment. You are absolutely right that when you delegate bits of project, you set goals. But the chunking concept is deeper than this. Think of something you wanted to do, but you postponed, you hesitated... This happened just because you didn't know how to handle that task. Let's take Steve Hunt's example with tango. He knows some steps, but doesn't know other steps. How does it feel for Steve Hunt if his tango instructor shows him really quickly the moves and then he says: your turn. Steve would try, with no success. He would feel stressed and unable to dance. He would not know how to handle it, and give up. However, if the instructor shows him the steps in slow motion (chunking down), then Steve will be able to do the same. So now Steve is able to make those moves. When I talk about delegating, I mean 2 steps: 1. chunk up (make it one task for YOU to handle, so your brain knows you only have one task, you feel less stress, you treat that task as a one); 2. delegate. However, when you delegate, you also tell the person that you delegate to how to handle it. Since you have learnt to do that task, you can chunk it down for your subordinate, so SHE CAN handle with ease.
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10 年Wow! Concise and clear way to put what I've been doing! Thanks.