A More Logical Way To Start Work Projects

Go wide.

Here’s a brief thought exercise to begin this idea: how many times in the last year at work has someone approached you and tried to talk to you about a project without (a) providing any context on it and/or (b) assumed you had some baseline knowledge of the project/plan/idea when, in fact, you’ve never heard of it? That was an absolutely horrible sentence I just wrote, but … my answer would be “about 15–20.” That’s a lot. That’s more than once a month. We talk often about “the modern-day worker” (gag) being “comfortable with ambiguity” (vomits in mouth), but if you’re getting tossed onto/into the fray of projects with no background or context once-twice a month, that’s going to mess up your other major deliverables. It’s going to completely decimate your idea of “mise-en-place” at work.

And yet, this happens to everyone, all the time: we get looped in on things that we have no idea about, and those things are 1/2 completed, or 3/4 completed, or there’s some consultant involved, or someone’s on PTO, or whatever it is … and it’s just one of many foibles around the general idea of project management and getting things done at work.

But maybe there’s a way to fix it.

First of all, before we get into the heart of the idea here, start in this very basic place: any work project absolutely…