A post-workshop report tries to capture the events of the workshop discussion. But the truth is, the context is lost, and with that loss, some of the value of the report is lost.

The goal of the report is partly memory jogger, to help attendees remember the discussion. Sufficiently capturing context for someone who wasn’t there, that needs different skills. And then, it gets even more difficult when time passes between the workshop and the report. Even if the report is written in a timely matter, coming back to read it months later sometimes leaves everyone wondering what went on.

The knowledge work economy emerged in the 1950s, after we’d perfected the industrialised factory approach to making things. Now that machines and production lines were starting to produce many of our goods, there needed to be a cohort of people managing that… and improving it.

But there was no structure attached to those roles. Over the next 50 years, chaotic workflow has emerged, now mostly driven by emails.

Knowledge workers are expected to ‘just know’ what to do next. And we often have – and want - the autonomy to figure out what’s next. This makes for haphazard approaches, for everyone.

It’s that time of year when I start looking for next year’s calendar, for planning, tracking, and dreaming.

For over 20 years, I used the Daytimer brand. When Daytimer left Australia a few years ago, I found another (better) solution with Agendio. It’s a terrific ‘design your own’ provider. I recommend it, though it’s expensive. Unfortunately, at the moment, they’re not delivering to Australia due to pandemic-reduced flights.

So, for 2022, I’ve cobbled together a made-up version. I can’t go without the month view. It gives me the big picture of available time, and importantly: my weekend and holiday plans.

Expecting to “increase productivity” in knowledge work is a flawed target. Increasing productivity works when there’s a direct relationship between increased input and increased outputs. But humans don’t work that way. Humans don’t function like a production line where the same widget is added the same way repeatedly. Work in the knowledge sector is more chaotic and unpredictable than that.

A better way to ‘increase productivity’ is to get more organised with the work and the workflow. This means strategies such as time planning, time blocking, task capturing, task categorisation, intentional prioritisation decisions, and daily, weekly, and quarterly goal planning.

When we sit down to do work, that’s what we should be doing.

I’m guilty of the other type: planning to do work, but an hour later I realise I’ve been doing administrative email reading and scrolling, rather than work.

I do good work when I actually block the time, and say to myself, for this 90mins, or whatever, all I’m doing is writing that report, or editing that standard, or reading that article. And then for that block of time, that’s all I do. No emails, no scrolling, no admin.

When you go to work, how about you do.

Doing something well, once, might be considered beginner’s luck. For example, running your first 10km in under 45minutes, or having your first book proposal accepted: these are amazing accomplishments. Doing an impressive thing once is good for the ego, and yes the bragging rights are worth it. No problem with that.

Doing things well over and over again is probably more satisfying. In the work world, there are many tasks that need doing many times. For example, writing reports, sorting through data, solving complex design problems. The best way to improve is to do them many times. Quantity builds quality.

A basic, often overlooked, need within organisations, in order to function efficiently, is categorisation and standardisation of what it does. Successful businesses have successfully categorised, simplified, and standardised.

Categorisation and standardisation applies to information storage, the findability of that information, the procedures, processes and outputs of a business. Useful categories and standardised processes allows newcomers (and oldtimers) to identify, manage, retrieve, and connect knowledge within the business.

No doubt it’s kind of boring to think about. And there’s a logical thought that being too standardised will inhibit innovation. On the contrary: standardisation can provide a stable launching point for innovation.

Deciding how to file our information doesn’t get enough attention. By this I mean our personal projects and filing.

Large corporate projects, particularly engineering ones, have whole teams to sort it out. It’s our own project information filing that ends up in a heap.

I think there are basically three information storage nuts to crack: the email folder system, the (cloud-based) file folder system, and our handwritten or electronic notebook files. They need different strategies, but similar processes. Personally, I haven’t been able to rely on the ‘one storage folder’ and search function; I still like a logical folder structure.

When facing a multitude of documents, and versions of documents, there are some simple things to do to help manage them.

For simplicity, I find the file name is the easiest thing to use to manage my own documents.

• Establish a consistent file naming convention. If outside your organisation’s system, there’s flexibility, so use what makes sense to you. It’s useful to include the date in the file name.

• Have a method of version control. The simplest way is to change the file name.

• For documents under development, keep the history but preface the file name with “SS”, for superseded.

Here are 3 tips I heard recently, to get on top of workload and expectations.

1. Allow enough time to do the work. For example, reading a 30-page report cannot be done “in a few minutes”. You probably need 30 minutes to read and absorb it properly.

2. Pause before proceeding. Particularly before sending an important email, but also before moving to the next task, and before making that difficult call. Have a pause. Catch your breath.

3. Systematise wherever possible. Use post-its or checklists or calendar reminders.

These won’t make the work easier, but they might make work easier.

Imagine a world where you are developing a process or standard, and you’re close to finished, and someone makes changes, but there’s no evidence of the change. There’s no indication that a change has been made. There’s no redline, there’s no vertical blackline in the margin, there’s no bubble callouts to explain the change.

I can’t, and don’t want to, imagine that world.

I use MSWord’s “Track Changes” functionality all the time. I also use the “Compare” function as well. It’s so very useful in identifying what changed between editions. (Version control: that’s a different topic that needs attention too).

A consensus is an outcome of group decision-making, when the goal is widespread agreement among group members, rather than majority rules.

When writing company procedures or standards, or when deciding on an organisational structure, when the decision affects a group of people, achieving consensus is the best outcome that can be reasonably expected.

In order to reach consensus, there needs to be robust discussion as well as respect.

Consensus allows for some of the group to not entirely agree. Everyone’s opinion should be heard and respected, and consensus represents the best solution that the group can achieve at the time.

Besides just knowing your audience, another key insight for documentation is to think through the ‘use case’ for it. This means thinking about why someone would look for your document, or what information they would be looking for.

The ‘use case’ concept is mostly used in software and website development. It’s a key step to clearly consider how the user will perform tasks on the website.

The same approach works for documents as well: consider what the reader is looking for.

It’s a different perspective, considering what they are thinking, instead of only thinking about what you are telling them.

I’ve been calling it “knowledge management”, but it never felt quite right. Then today I came across the word “articulation”, and maybe that’s a better word for it.

Knowledge articulation work. It’s the connection and coordination of knowledge.

In project teams (or any business teams), we need the ability to ‘articulate’ our knowledge: clearly convey what we know, and also see how it can help solve complex problems. So, it’s not just managing knowledge, it’s the articulation of it.

Working in groups will always be a factor in work life, and maybe lack of knowledge articulation causes a few mishaps.

One of the most under-represented stresses in the workplace is that of mismatched expectations. Whether it’s around time commitment or availability, or related to documentation or following a process, the impact of mismatched expectations is major.

It’s not discussed enough, our expectations of each other. Know yours, and keep in mind that other person might have different expectations.

When there’s a belief that something is going to happen, or someone will behave a certain way, and that’s not how it turns out, then there can only be disappointment.

So if you’re disappointed all the time, maybe you have inflated expectations.

Everyone likes an executive summary. Good executive summaries distil the content of a longer report into the key topics or outcomes. The executive summary helps the reader get the ‘gist’ of the document, without having to read the whole document.

Perhaps we should all just write in executive summaries. Keep it short and to the point. Maybe there’s no need to write the whole document.

But of course, that’s not right. The explanations need to be written, so that it can then be summarised. In order to write the summary, the author needs to be very familiar with the content.

The activity of sense-making includes explaining things, putting things in order, and understanding relationships. Sense-making is the act of simplification and organising. When we’re able to explain something, we’ve made sense of it. When we’re able to predict what comes next, it makes sense to us. If something is hard to explain, or we don’t know what will happen next, then there’s an open loop in our brain. And that causes cognitive load.

Little things like predictive routines and familiar processes give us comfort, because it makes sense. This is why standardisation and habits help: they close an open loop.

I can’t stress it enough: when it comes to documents, be very, very clear about who is the audience of that document. Think about who will read it, who will look for it. Think about why they’d look for it. And consider what situation would cause someone to appreciate having that document.

The corporate world of documents is drowning in documents, probably because of the ease in which we can create them. Most of them never get read. Technology allows us to organise them, file them, tag them. Organisation of documents is good, but more importantly, know who’s reading them.

When something doesn’t get done, it’s because you’ve prioritised something else over it.

The hard part is deciding what to prioritise.

This is the dilemma of any number of workers, entrepreneurs, project managers, dual-career families, parents or students. Anyone who has ‘a million’ things to do. The real problem is the difficulty in prioritising.

Because doing one thing, any of the million things that need doing, means you are prioritising that over the others.

And calling that out is sometimes telling. It’s not “I’m too busy to do that”, it’s “I’ve prioritised something else over that”. Just own the decision.

Most humans strive to organise, even just a little. Even those who don’t feel particularly organised, still you seek to group things.

We group the cutlery in the kitchen drawer, we group our clothes in the closet (don’t you?), and we group our documents and emails, in whatever way suits us at the moment (often ineffectively).

It’s an attempt to visually represent relationships. The human brain looks for patterns and familiarity. By grouping things together, we have a bit of a shortcut. For more complex activities or artefacts, the grouping helps to inform structure and helps to navigate the subject.