Since time immemorial, philosophers and holy men have debated: what separates humans from animals? Some say it’s language. Some say morality. And some even say love. But you and I, dear listener, we know the truth: what separates man from animal is that we (and we alone) have policies and procedures.
From the Ten Commandments to The Joy of Cooking cookbook, we love to write down how we do things, in our charmingly naive belief that other humans are just sitting on the edge of their seat, waiting to receive our great wisdom.
(In reality, of course, they’re as self-absorbed as we are, and only pretend to listen so they can start sharing their wisdom at the first available opportunity.)
Our Future Selves Need Documentation
But there is someone who genuinely needs our wisdom, and needs it in a big way: our future selves.
To market my Get-it-Done Groups, I have to put together an email "launch." That’s a series of emails that go out to my email list, telling people how awesome the groups are, and how they should sign up immediately so their lives will be full of magic and unicorns and fairy dust. Plus, everyone will respect them, they’ll become instant trillionaires, and they’ll find Mr./Ms./Ziz Right...or at least Mr./Ms./Ziz Right Now.
There are three email lists that get messages. Each list needs a separately-written series of 3–4 emails. Each email must be tagged, so the same person doesn’t get sent multiple emails. And each email links to a registration page that may be slightly different depending on which list they were on.
There are about 10,000 moving parts, and this has to happen every time there’s a new Get-It-Done Group starting.
If there are a few months between the groups, by the time it’s time to do it again, there may be a dozen tiny details that need to be re-learned or reinvented. It’s way too much to remember through sheer force of memory.
Document as You Go
The first time through, a project like this is horribly complicated. But you can make it easier next time by documenting as you go. Take a page out of The Joy of Cooking and make a recipe for doing the big, complicated task.
Get a notebook to use for your procedure. This is your “resource book,” where you’ll capture everything you need to do your Big, Complicated Task.
Step one: identify what to document. Ask yourself, what am I working on? “I’m writing an email discussing how we can accidentally drop projects on the floor.” If you give a super-specific answer like that, ask, What larger task is this part of? Your answer: “I’m creating a promotional email campaign.” That seems like a good task to document. Not too vague and big-picture, not too detailed.
This becomes the title of your resource book. Create promotional email campaign.
List out the steps as you do them. As you put together your promotional campaign, jot down the steps in your resource book. If the first thing you do is grab a calendar and decide dates for the emails, then write down, “1. Grab calendar and choose dates for emails.” There’s absolutely nothing mysterious or magical in what you write. Just make a diary of the steps you take.
Get Down and Dirty
Include all the details. When one of your steps requires additional information, or an email address, or a phone number, or reference to a particular resource, note that, too. For example, rather than just writing, “consult with the marketing department,” paste in a copy of the agenda you put together for that meeting. That way you’ll know what to consult about.
If you find your project includes making phone calls, jot down who you had to call and the phone number, for future reference. “Called local health department to ensure ink used in emails was non-toxic. Talked to Fred, at 212–555–1212.”
Err on the side of including too much detail. The next time you follow this process, you can just skip details that don’t apply.
Think Like Betty Crocker
Prep your process. Once you’ve completed your task, you can use it as a recipe for doing the same task again. But first, let’s streamline it a bit.
When Betty Crocker decides to make Oreo Ice Cream cake, she starts with an ingredients list. She goes shopping to acquire all the ingredients.
Then she preps the ingredients. And with them all laid out on the counter, ready to go, she follows the recipe and powers right through.
This is true of policies and procedures, too. When creating an online store, you need a web page for each product, and a “Thank You for purchasing” page. If you create the Thank You page first, you can create a product page and link it to that Thank You page. Have the Thank You page prepped and ready and the later parts of the procedure—setting up the sales page—is as easy as peaches and cream.
Pull Out the Ingredients
Scan your list and pull out all of the "ingredients" that should be done first, so everything else goes more easily. Move those things to the top of the list, so you do them first next time.
I actually label these things "ingredients" when I’m writing up a procedure. That way it’s obvious they need to be done first, and it also make me warm and fuzzy, thinking of warm, wonderful cookies baking in an oven, in case little Hansel and Gretel pop by for a morsel.
My entire online promotion campaign for Get-it-Done Groups has six web pages and sixteen email messages. Some are as simple as a "Thank You." Others are entire articles. Those are my ingredients.
By creating those ingredients first, entering them into the email marketing platform, coding everything with tags, and automating the campaign becomes pretty straightforward.
Create your own resource books for anything you think the Future You will need to do a second time. Decide what level of detail you’re going to capture. Then record each step as you do it, along with any supporting information, phone numbers, etc. When you’re done, review the book and separate out things that need to be done first, the “ingredients” that the recipe uses. Then rewrite those up front, so next time, you can just grab your ingredients and go.
That’s the goal with the Get-it-Done Groups. An email launch may be time consuming to do right, today, but once the process is duly recorded, future me will be able to do it lickity split, leaving plenty of time to ponder philosophical questions about the differences between humans and animals.
I’m Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. If you have projects that are stalled or taking too long, check out my “Get-it-Done Groups” accountability groups. Learn more at http://SteverRobbins.com. Image of step-by-step project © Shutterstock.
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