First Lesson on Productivity

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Hey fellow humanitarian leader,

I am writing this email two hours before the beginning of my holidays.

And I am in a rush. Not for poor planning, I must admit. I left enough time to write this email in my personal and work schedule.

But then, new meetings materialized; new projects for the next two weeks appeared, but to be finalized in four days; I had some farewell moments; and I was also tired of all of the above.

I still want to keep consistency and write my weekly email.

Because I want to.

And because you deserve it. You have subscribed because you want to know more about the humanitarian sector. You will have your weekly tip.

I think this will be a short email, but with a great lesson to learn.

Pretty basic, right?

Nevertheless, it is often overlooked or somewhat willingly forgotten.

I am probably stating the obvious, but we often struggle or fail or do not succeed for poor planning.

We don’t plan our timelines well. We don’t plan our meetings well. We don’t plan our projects well. We don’t plan our holidays well - even though this is usually the activity we pay more attention to.

I value planning, time management, deep work, and all that comes together.

You will read more about it in the following months because your productivity and that of your team are paramount to being a good humanitarian leader, and you often work in fast-paced environments.

For today, I want you to remember the basic lesson: plan well for your tasks but leave some space for the inevitable unforeseen coming up.

Or you will end up doing many things quickly at the last moment.

Take a look at the classic Fast, Good, or Cheap model.

Good things done fast are expensive - in our case, in terms of mental resources.

Things done with little resources - the cheap circle - are too slow for our deadline or low quality.

If you plan well, you will have enough time to achieve high-quality results with the right mental resources and in the right amount of time.

For the next three weeks, I will be on holiday. I wanted to say “well-deserved holidays,” but you should ask my boss about the validity of that statement. I am going to rest a bit, but hopefully, I will be able to continue the newsletter. It all depends on how well I plan my time off.

Thanks for reading,
Luca

P.S. Speaking about holidays and R&R, I created an R&R calculator that can be useful for you and your colleagues. It is free, so share it with fellow humanitarians!