Where your week goes: the bottleneck checklist
A one-week exercise that shows exactly which jobs to take off your plate first. It needs a notebook and about five minutes a day.
- Log one normal week in half-hour blocks
Write what you actually did, not what was planned. Do not pick an unusual week.
- Mark every task you did more than three times
Repetition is the first sign a job can be handed over.
- Mark every time you copied information from one place to another
Order into spreadsheet, email into system, form into invoice. Each one is a connection waiting to be made.
- Mark every message you have written before
Quotes, confirmations, reminders, the same answers to the same questions.
- Note everything only you know how to do
These are your risks as well as your bottlenecks. They need writing down before they can be shared.
- Put minutes and frequency against each repeated task
Minutes each time, multiplied by times a week. Rank by hours.
- Ask what would break if volume doubled next month
Move those to the top, even if they are small today.
- Tidy the steps before automating anything
Remove the steps nobody needs. Automating a muddle only makes it faster.
- Pick the one with the most hours and the least risk
A good first project saves time every week and causes no harm on the day it gets something wrong.
- Decide the number you will check afterwards
Hours a week, response time, errors. Write today's figure down now.
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