Productivity Hack: Write Mini Process Flows
Creativity is one thing, but capturing it into a form that’s useful (to your needs) is another. I’ve got an idea that I plan to implement for myself: mini process flows. Now, your jobs that you’ll need done are different than mine. I’ll just show you mine as examples, okay?
Process Flow Basics
Here are the basics of getting something done by way of a process flow:
Input - Work Performed - Output.
You start by taking _____ from someone or something. You do what you’re going to do to it. You give it out to wherever it’s going. The trick, of course, is mostly within the “work performed” section. You have to lay that out in such a way that it’s repeatable, and that you can follow along without much attention to the process after you get it working right. Let’s take a task I’m doing these days: producing a podcast.
More Than One Flow
First off, producing a podcast has lots of steps that deserve their own flows. Let me think:
- Collect Information
- Interview Someone
- Record My Parts
- Edit Audio
- Mix audio
- Write Show Notes
- Produce the files
- Upload Files to Host
- Build Corresponding Show Notes Post
(Don’t worry. I won’t make a flow for each of those.)
Build the Flow
For my example, I’ll do “Produce the Files.”
Here’s an example of how a flow might work out-
- Input- audio mix from GarageBand 3 still in Garage Band and Show Notes in Text Editor.
- Work- Play through audio once, listening for big mistakes.
- Send the file to iTunes.
- Inside iTunes, select the file, choose Get Info.
- Edit info, inserting show notes and links into Lyrics tab. Doublecheck art. Etc.
- Choose “Convert File to MP3.”
- Play the new MP3 file once it’s converted.
- Move MP3 file to upload area.
- Output- Upload Files to Host flow
That’s how that process flow works. I use GarageBand 3 to mix down the podcast (all the music tracks, the interview bit, my bumpers, my promos, etc), and then I use iTunes to convert the file from Apple’s proprietary file format into the easier-to-distribute and consume MP3 format.
The Benefit of Process Flows
So, if I had a small notebook with printed pages that said, “Podcast Production,” and that contained all the flows for the various steps listed above, I’d have a fairly easy set of Next Actions to follow to get my job done.
The BENEFIT of that is simple. I can choose to scale any part of my efforts that I can explain so easily in those process flows. For instance, what if I wanted to pay someone to do my editing, my mixing, my file production, and pretty much everything after the creative efforts? I could re-write the flow such that the entire “Produce the Files” flow could be sent off to someone else, and they could do pretty much everything else for the rest of the process.
Being able to disaggregate parts of the value chain means that I can choose to focus on different parts of the process, such as recording more audio, improving my techniques, etc. There are far better audio editors than me, but maybe I want my own style to show through in the interview process. Or maybe I don’t. I could give the flows for getting the recordings made to others, and then do the back-end work for them.
See how this can be useful?
Flows as Next Actions
Because flows have inputs and outputs, they act as somewhat larger Next Action moments within the project. You could choose to overlay contexts to the flows such that each Input section could show the contexts necessary. For instance, I can’t produce the files for a podcast while out at a coffee shop (not yet, at least). So, some consideration to that could be overlayed to deal with those concerns.
Further, because my work requires some amount of creativity, there are times when I’m not as ready to produce as others (no, really!). I can use those times to work other flows that are just as important, but aren’t as heavy on the brain power.
What’s your take? How would you add to this? Do you use anything like process flows in your day now?
–Chris Brogan is working on executing larger scale projects with increasing complexity using these types of process flows. His blog is [chrisbrogan.com], but don’t go there today. His new media company is Grasshopper New Media, where he just brought on Kevin Kennedy-Spaien as Executive Producer for Health Programming.
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Comments
Rob Slagle says on July 27th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Most of that documentation is already being done in corporate America, it is called Sarbanes-Oxley 404. The law mandates that all essential business controls have to be documented and tested, and signed off by management and external auditors.
Gray Miller says on July 27th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
From a more personal standpoint, this is one of the best parts of the “Lifebalance” software I’ve been using. I created a “flow” (not quite as detailed as yours, but remarkably similar) for my podcast(s), and not only set them to repeat weekly, but also to remind me of them in order. So, earlier this week suddenly “Make notes for show” appeared in my to-do list. When I got that done, it was replaced with “Record show”, then “edit show”, where I’m at right now, all the way through “show notes posted” and “Publicize.” When I get them all checked off, it will leave me alone…for a week. Then it starts again.
You’d asked me earlier, btw, what I thought of LifeBalance. Answer: I’m lovin’ it!
sidenote: I was just putting up my pro podcasts on to blubrry.com, and was going to add you as a friend…but you’re not there. Have you registered? It looks to be a good community…
Eric Allam says on July 27th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Yes, process flows do look like the next natural step in scaling of a GTD system. This post reminds me alot of http://www.strategicprofits.com/2006/07/19/video/, which is a video of Rich Shefren talking about building businesses, and he specifcally mentions that the creation of systems is what facilitates scaling. He also mentions flow charts, or process flows.
isd says on July 27th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
I think this is your best and most useful post ever.
I happened to use process flows for a work in june and I managed to do 2-3 times more work than my colleagues without feeling too much brain fatigue. It was impressive!
reno says on July 28th, 2006 at 7:23 am
Hello !
I write to you just to say that it’s very funny to read you from where i live : Brussels (belgium).
You have a very good website !
Thanks for that and congratulations !
Best regards.
Reno
Avdi says on July 28th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
There’s a danger in this kind of thinking. I know this first hand, from writing software at a very large corporation. Management is obsessed with making every process predictable and repeatable, so they adopt methodologies like this one, only much, much larger in scale, where they try to turn every process into an assembly-line style set of mindless steps. Unfortunately, for creative work like programming or writing, 95% of the “process” is an indivisible and by nature unpredictable blob of time spent on knowledge work. You can’t break this down into daily or weekly input->procedure->output chunks, because the only input is the problem (”make a program which does X”) and the only output is the solution (”a program which does X”). In between the problem and the solution is months of sitting and thinking, or typing, or consulting with colleagues, or researching, or testing.
In my experience the few repeatable activities which would be amenable to mapping out as a “process flow” are just as easily kept in my head. E.g. I don’t need a process flow for doing the dishes, despite the fact that it has readily identifiable inputs and outputs. Most of the really *hard* work I have to do from day to day and week to week involves sitting down and using my brain - a task which is benefitted not at all by written process flow.
Personally, I feel this goes against the grain of the minimalist GTD philosophy which emphasizes using your intuition (with the help of a few heuristics) as the most knowledgeable judge of what to do next.
Avdi says on July 28th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Also, I think David Allen already covered this pretty well when he suggested that one of the best things you can do is to write lists for anything you do repeatedly. E.g. I have an end-of-day and end-of-week checklist on my PDA for when I’m wrapping up my work. For repeated activities that have a number of steps checklists are great; but I question the need for anything fancier (or fancier-sounding).
Chris Brogan... says on July 28th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Those are good points, Avdi.
Regarding the input of “give me a program,” and the output of “here’s the program,” that’s exactly where a process or processes would be. They could be open-ended in places: think about this. But even then, I bet your thinking has some forms: go back and revisit code that you like, see if there’s something in forums that matches the code, talk with your friends about cars and then somehow think of the best way to solve it, nap.
Processes can account for “kite flying” time, dreaming and looking up.
You mention using your brain being the big undocumented feature. In ways, yes. But I bet some of what you do in your brain is teachable. Do you train junior programmers? How would you show THEM what to do next?
Maybe not. As an artist, I can only show someone what I do, but not always how my head gets from point A to point R without the letters in between.
The subtitle of GTD is “The Art of Stress Free Productivity.” If you could capture what you do (or most of it) into processes that then were just repeatable models, wouldn’t that be stress free?
I just re-read the first ten pages. Nothing I say here counters GTD, as written by David Allen.
I think creativity can be captured to some degree in a process, or at least there’s a lot of stuff around the creative core that can be captured. But then, that’s my philosophy.
Good opinions, and I’m happy to have to talk.
Avdi says on July 28th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
I continue to disagree. Keep in mind I’m coming from the perspective of someone who works in an environment where a lot of people are very eager to reduce creativity to a robotic process. Would reducing the things I do into repeatable models make me stress-free? Absolutely not. It would not affect my stress one way or another.
The big gain of GTD is getting all the “whats” down into a trusted system so I’m not constantly worrying about them. One of the things that attracted me to it is that it doesn’t even begin to address the “hows”. This is in stark contrast to a lot of methodologies. I’m reminded of a Dilbert comic I had on my cube wall for years: a new person is introduced to the employees by the PHB: “This is Patty, the new consultant. She doesn’t know how to DO anything. She just knows how to do things BETTER.” Patty adds: “Process!”
For people like us who think really hard about how to work better, I think this is an easy trap to fall into. I know it has been for me. And I think that it’s this line of thinking which leads to heavyweight methodologies like Franklin-Covey, which Allen is clearly reacting to. Or RUP, in the software world.
What I like about Allen is that his method is like the Extreme Programming of personal organization. By eliminating prescriptive process and focusing on clearing the mind, you are more able to react fluidly to change, like a martial artist in the ready position. In my opinion, adding process-thinking back, in detracts from one of your greatest assets as a human being - the ability to intuitively do the right thing at this unique moment in time, based on all of your conscious and unconscious knowledge.
But hey, if it works for you, I’m not gonna knock it. Just wanted to put this caution out there, as someone who feels keenly the temptation to over-formalize.
Chris Brogan... says on July 28th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
That Dilbert comic is a classic and hilarious! Of course, most all business life can be summed up by Dilbert.
The only funny thing about mentioning Extreme Programming is that it pretty much ruined our R&D team (about 100 folks) for two years. We thought sure that process would really help things out.
The problem with extreme programming, we discovered, is that it’s great within a closed system of people who know each other and trust each others’ abilities and skills. The moment you have to interface with other teams, take on new staff, or do anything else to change out the process, it scuttles.
When acquiring a company in another country, it was quickly apparent that they didn’t have anything written down (anything of value), so whenever we’d work with their code, it was mostly a lot of shrugs and, “that’s just how we know how to do it” answers.
The process flow hack was mostly about instrumenting free time for your own productivity. In fact, it spawned my post today about Your Second Life. I found that I wasn’t really using my evenings well.
Black-boxing the creative process can be your method, and that’s fine. I just think there’s lots of it that can be shared out.
I think we’ll just agree to disagree.
isd says on July 31st, 2006 at 2:23 am
I think GTD is a method we apply to ouselves, ze create our processes for ourselves because it let us think about more important stuff. Noone tells us to follow any process they made.
I think what you talk about is the difficulty for humans to adapt in a processus that is not adapted to them. And GTD is made to adapt ouselves right?
bonder says on August 1st, 2006 at 7:54 pm
As an IT person with a background in software development myself, I both agree with Avdi’s point and disagree at the same time.
Yes, you can’t script out process. But yes, you can script out routine. For instance, the process of how to check code changes in and out of your source code repository is both routine but creative:
1. Have you entered the appropriate comments when checking in?
2. Have you written enough unit tests to exercise the bug and fix you have written?
3. Did you check the code into the correct place (trunk or branch)?
4. Did you break the build?
5. Did you mark your story, task, or bug completed?
etc.
Also, GTD is *all* about process. The “Mastering Workflow” diagram is a process. It’s just that it’s an extremely general process for — well, processing.
–bonder
bonder says on August 1st, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Sorry, I made a typo:
“Yes, you can鈥檛 script out process”
should really be
“Yes, you can鈥檛 script out CREATIVITY”
mea culpa!
–bonder
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