‘Sprints’ are changing the way I work
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a day when my stress tried to get the best of me . . . but I didn’t let it.
Instead of pushing through (and sending myself straight into burnout), I took a break. I stepped away from my desk to make dinner, and later, I went back and made a list of my priorities with a much clearer and calmer mind. Then, I set a timer for two hours, worked on my priorities until it went off, and left the rest to tackle in the morning after a good night's sleep.
The Kristen of even a year ago would never have done that. That is growth, my friends!
In today’s post, I’m taking you back to that night because there’s more to the story of how I reduced my overwhelm and conquered my stress. That evening, in a last-ditch attempt to help my tired brain, I tried a new approach to organizing my tasks. To my surprise, it worked—so much so, in fact, that I’ve been using it ever since.
So, that’s why I want to share it with you! To help illustrate how it works, I need to start by explaining what was on my to-do list that night.
What was particularly overwhelming to me wasn’t just the volume of work I had on my plate; it was the type of work. Most of it was what I would consider creative. For me, that looks like client deliverables: keynote and workbook outlines, digital resources that accompany my speaking sessions, etc.
I love working on these things—they are totally in my sweet spot and a huge part of why I love my job—but I also know that if I want to do my best on them, I need to be in the right mindset and have a certain amount of creative energy. My clients hire me to do transformational work, and they put a lot of trust in me to deliver. I want to give them my very best.
When I looked at my task list that night and saw how much of it included creative work, it only made me feel more overwhelmed. That was right before the start of my busy speaking season, too, so I had a lot of deliverables on my plate, all of which required creative energy. I’d planned to make a lot of momentum on them that day, but other tasks had crept in, and by the end of the day, my creativity was zapped.
Stepping away to make dinner and take a break was huge for my mindset. When I came back to my desk with a clearer mind and a better idea of my actual priorities, I began to consider my capacity. What do I have enough energy to do tonight and do well? I asked myself. And what needs to get done first?
I looked at the most urgent creative task on my list—a session outline—and decided I’d be able to do that one and give it my best, but the rest of the creative stuff would have to wait. The outline wouldn’t take the full two hours I had ahead of me, though, so I went back to my list to see what other non-creative tasks I could tackle.
Further down my list were some pretty simple administrative tasks that needed my attention in the next day or so. I could knock those out, I thought. So, I wrote them down on a new list under the session outline.
Now, I had a list of just three things to get done. While one of them would take a good amount of the time and energy I had left that night, the other two were pretty simple.
I can do all of this tonight, I told myself. No problem. I set my two-hour timer and got to work.
When the timer went off, all three items were complete. My little “sprint” to the finish line was done, and I felt so accomplished. It was really motivating.
The next morning, after a great night’s sleep, I woke up early and got right back to it. I went back to my list and decided to try the same thing I had done the night before: I reorganized it into a few of these “sprints,” each of which had a mix of creative tasks and administrative deliverables that were easier to check off the list.
Before I knew it, I’d completed two sprints and checked off two of my biggest creative tasks. I was making so much progress that my momentum felt unstoppable. And to think, just the day before, I thought there was no way I could get it all done.
In the end, I turned my giant, once-overwhelming list of tasks into about 10 sprints that I worked to complete over a few days. It felt great to be able to get my creative work done in a way that honored my energy and check off other important things on my list at the same time.
Sprints have changed the game for me in a way no productivity “hack” ever has before.
Prior to sprints, I tried just about every hack you can think of. The pomodoro method (where you work for a set number of minutes, take a break, and then get back to it) was great for admin, but it never worked for me when it came to my creative tasks.
I also tried organizing my work into “buckets”: creative in one, admin in another, etc. I would tell myself, “Today is going to be a creative day,” or, “Today is all about strategy,” and then attempt to only do tasks that fell into those buckets. The problem was that some buckets took a lot more of my energy than others. At the end of some days, I’d be completely exhausted, and other days, I’d wake up, see what kind of day I’d planned for myself, and realize I wasn’t in the right mindset for it. And then that would lead to me feeling like I’d let myself down or becoming overwhelmed because I wasn’t doing the thing that I’d set out to do.
These methods weren’t sustainable for me because none of them worked for all my different types of work. But sprints do. The key, for me, is pairing a really creative, energy-intensive task with easy, straightforward ones. It helps me strike the right balance for my brain and helps me feel like I’m making momentum.
Ever since then, I’ve been organizing all of my work into sprints. At the start of each week, I look at everything I have on my plate and identify the things that will require the most energy and brainpower. I then put each of them in a different sprint by themselves and fill in the rest of the sprints with the smaller, more manageable tasks I need to get done that week.
I don’t aim for a certain number of sprints each week; I just make enough to tackle my priorities. And I don’t determine which days I'm going to do which sprints in advance unless there are deadlines involved. When each day comes, I simply ask myself which sprint I feel most inspired to start with. Once I get my first sprint out of the way, it’s off to the races. The momentum just builds.
I’m a couple months into using this technique, and I can’t believe the impact. My priority list feels so much more attainable. I’m getting so much more done and feeling a lot less stressed, even though I have even more on my plate now than I did when I started “sprinting.” To top it all off, I feel like the quality of my work has increased because sprints work so well for my brain.
What do you think about this approach? What is this post making you think about? Have you found a productivity “hack” or strategy that really works for you? Hit “reply” and tell me all about it! I’d love to know.
We’ve got this!
Big hugs,
