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Deep work series - episode 3
Lesson #3
Welcome back
Hello deep readers, ready for our third lesson?
Like its predecessors, this lesson contains concepts extracted from the resourceful Deep Work book by Cal Newport properly mixed with some personal experience, all of it resulting in a unique journey into productivity space ... enough with this introductory crap, enjoy your read.
Like its predecessors, this lesson contains concepts extracted from the resourceful Deep Work book by Cal Newport properly mixed with some personal experience, all of it resulting in a unique journey into productivity space ... enough with this introductory crap, enjoy your read.
Lesson #3: measures!
At the beginning of this series I described productivity as a pseudo-scientific approach to everyday life. Like in any other scientific discipline, it is necessary to define measures. Newport touches on measures in the chapter dedicated to rule #1 as part of the dispensed advices to help the reader implement a "deep routine". The ideas discussed in this section build upon the book the 4 disciplines of execution (4DX). As the title anticipates, the authors (Chris McChesney, Jim Huling, and Sean Covey) propose 4 "disciplines" to 'guide companies from the what to the how'.
It’s often straightforward to identify a strategy needed to achieve a goal, but what traps up companies is figuring out how to execute the strategy once identified.
Although originally destined for the business world, Newport adapts the 4 disciplines guidelines to the realm of deep work. Just like many companies, he argues, we often find ourselves lost into the 'how', once we've identified the 'what'. In this chapter of the book you can find a fairly extensive account of the 4DX methodology, specifically tailored to the reader's routine. I'm not going to discuss it with you - at least not directly. I'd like to focus instead on one particular concept that emerges from this business-oriented approach: the idea of measures.
Second only to establishing priorities, that of identifying the right measures to track your progress is a fundamental step towards accomplishing your goals (may them be increasing your customer satisfaction, or losing some weight). The authors of 'the 4 disciplines' claim that the problem with measures is that people usually use the wrong ones. In this perspective, they make a distinction between what they call lag and lead measures.
They call lag measures those that describe your ultimate goal: carrying on the examples above, we could identify as lag measures your customer satisfaction score in the first case and the kgs lost in the second one.
On the other hand, lead measures are meant to keep track of the progress towards the goal by measuring the new behaviors that will drive success on the lag measures. In the business goal case again, we could use as a lead measure the number of customers who receive free samples -assuming that giving free sample increases the number of satisfied customers in the long run- while in our personal goal case, we could adopt as lead measure the number of weekly workouts.
These are trivial examples, which hopefully help you understand the underlying concept. In a nutshell, lead measures bridge the gap between the "what" and the "how", since you can expect your lag measures to eventually improve as you act on the lead measures.
Second only to establishing priorities, that of identifying the right measures to track your progress is a fundamental step towards accomplishing your goals (may them be increasing your customer satisfaction, or losing some weight). The authors of 'the 4 disciplines' claim that the problem with measures is that people usually use the wrong ones. In this perspective, they make a distinction between what they call lag and lead measures.
They call lag measures those that describe your ultimate goal: carrying on the examples above, we could identify as lag measures your customer satisfaction score in the first case and the kgs lost in the second one.
On the other hand, lead measures are meant to keep track of the progress towards the goal by measuring the new behaviors that will drive success on the lag measures. In the business goal case again, we could use as a lead measure the number of customers who receive free samples -assuming that giving free sample increases the number of satisfied customers in the long run- while in our personal goal case, we could adopt as lead measure the number of weekly workouts.
These are trivial examples, which hopefully help you understand the underlying concept. In a nutshell, lead measures bridge the gap between the "what" and the "how", since you can expect your lag measures to eventually improve as you act on the lead measures.
Lead measures turn your attention to improving the behaviors you directly control in the near future that will then have a positive impact on your long-term goals.
Now, these are all fascinating ideas, but, as the authors of 4DX admit, merely defining your lag and lead measures is not enough to make real progress. You need one more ingredient to start the engine and make the wheels magically turn: emotional engagement. To be fair, you won't find the expression "emotional engagement" anywhere in the 4DX or the Deep Work books: I made it up! It is a more general way to describe the techniques that are presented there: for instance discipline #3, "keep a compelling scoreboard", is just one way to obtain what I call emotional engagement. Let me explain the concept through examples.
From the 4DX book: "people play differently when they’re keeping score"; the authors suggest to keep track of the progress on the lead measures publicly in order to naturally activate a sense of competition that keeps the team focused on these measures. Notice that here again we find a trick that leverages a simple and effective psychology rule. To adapt the advice to the deep work setting, Newport suggests introducing a physical artifact in the workplace (the DeepWork scoreboard) that displays the personal progress on the chosen lead measure. For a (very) detailed description of this special scoreboard I refer you directly to the book's chapter. An aspect of this solution which I find particularly interesting is the claimed benefit of a visceral, physical connection with our results. Newport argues that tangible evidence of our progress may foster our motivation and additionally help calibrating our expectations on the work that we can get done.
I experimented with Newport's version of this 4DX technique, but let me now propose an alternative (also falling under the "emotional engagement umbrella") which worked better for me. This is a good example of the fine tuning work which I mentioned in the beginning of this series: books or blog posts like this one can only bring you so far, the rest has to come from you.
The physical scoreboard was not enough to keep me motivated: when the first excitement had worn out I would often forget to update it, which in turn made it less effective. I suspected that the reason I would so easily drop the commitment was that I knew no one except me would be checking the score. With this in mind, I devised a strategy that would force me to keep using the scoreboard: I started sharing my progress. I turned to a virtual scoreboard that could be seen by ideally anyone and which would automatically track my lead measure as I worked on it. This approach borrows at a high level from discipline #4, "Create a Cadence of Accountability". The idea there is to schedule frequent meetings with your co-workers and compare the scoreboards. However, instead of competition as suggested by the 4DX authors I leveraged a force that I know to have a stronger pull on me: pride. Potentially being held accountable for my work made all the difference: I still use that same scoreboard.
Additionally, it may help to involve your friends/colleagues in the game: share your scoreboard with them, and explain your measure and target. It doesn't matter if they will actually start checking it regularly: from that moment on your goals will feel more concrete and you'll start working on them with a new energy.
Today I apply the same principle in a variety of contexts. It has become now natural for me to share most of my work, either directly or indirectly (through a scoreboard) with the people closest to me, and sometimes even with strangers, like in the case of this blog. I was not expecting anyone to read my posts actually, and in all honesty it did not matter: knowing that what I was writing would be publicly available made it more real for me, which was all I needed to start and -above all- KEEP writing, as I wished.
Hopefully by now you have an idea of how important measures can be in guiding any actual change in our lives, and also of how to incorporate them in your routine. The trick is simple: once you've defined your "what" and identified "how", find a way to engage yourself emotionally in the process, may it be through competition, pride or anything that you know to have a hold on you.
We've reached the end of this third post, let me know what you think and maybe tell me about your own experiences with measures. I'll see you on the fourth and last lesson.
From the 4DX book: "people play differently when they’re keeping score"; the authors suggest to keep track of the progress on the lead measures publicly in order to naturally activate a sense of competition that keeps the team focused on these measures. Notice that here again we find a trick that leverages a simple and effective psychology rule. To adapt the advice to the deep work setting, Newport suggests introducing a physical artifact in the workplace (the DeepWork scoreboard) that displays the personal progress on the chosen lead measure. For a (very) detailed description of this special scoreboard I refer you directly to the book's chapter. An aspect of this solution which I find particularly interesting is the claimed benefit of a visceral, physical connection with our results. Newport argues that tangible evidence of our progress may foster our motivation and additionally help calibrating our expectations on the work that we can get done.
I experimented with Newport's version of this 4DX technique, but let me now propose an alternative (also falling under the "emotional engagement umbrella") which worked better for me. This is a good example of the fine tuning work which I mentioned in the beginning of this series: books or blog posts like this one can only bring you so far, the rest has to come from you.
The physical scoreboard was not enough to keep me motivated: when the first excitement had worn out I would often forget to update it, which in turn made it less effective. I suspected that the reason I would so easily drop the commitment was that I knew no one except me would be checking the score. With this in mind, I devised a strategy that would force me to keep using the scoreboard: I started sharing my progress. I turned to a virtual scoreboard that could be seen by ideally anyone and which would automatically track my lead measure as I worked on it. This approach borrows at a high level from discipline #4, "Create a Cadence of Accountability". The idea there is to schedule frequent meetings with your co-workers and compare the scoreboards. However, instead of competition as suggested by the 4DX authors I leveraged a force that I know to have a stronger pull on me: pride. Potentially being held accountable for my work made all the difference: I still use that same scoreboard.
Additionally, it may help to involve your friends/colleagues in the game: share your scoreboard with them, and explain your measure and target. It doesn't matter if they will actually start checking it regularly: from that moment on your goals will feel more concrete and you'll start working on them with a new energy.
Today I apply the same principle in a variety of contexts. It has become now natural for me to share most of my work, either directly or indirectly (through a scoreboard) with the people closest to me, and sometimes even with strangers, like in the case of this blog. I was not expecting anyone to read my posts actually, and in all honesty it did not matter: knowing that what I was writing would be publicly available made it more real for me, which was all I needed to start and -above all- KEEP writing, as I wished.
Hopefully by now you have an idea of how important measures can be in guiding any actual change in our lives, and also of how to incorporate them in your routine. The trick is simple: once you've defined your "what" and identified "how", find a way to engage yourself emotionally in the process, may it be through competition, pride or anything that you know to have a hold on you.
We've reached the end of this third post, let me know what you think and maybe tell me about your own experiences with measures. I'll see you on the fourth and last lesson.
