Piecework can be defined as work paid for according to the amount produced, for example in farm work, where it’s common for work crews for fruit and vegetable farming to often paid by piece rate.
How many eggs did you collect? How many “units” did you make?
Piece rate has also become popular with remote work, where contractors will perform data entry, translation, graphic design, video editing and call center activities.
So how do people demonstrate their work?
A lot of times, they are performing activities that make them seem busy, like being on the phone all the time, either speaking or texting. Being the quickest to reply in the company Slack channels and Telegram groups, and complaining about how crazy busy their day, week and month has been.
These are the people who reply to their boss’s emails at midnight.
They complain about the prison of their business without realizing that it is they who are the prison guards of the prison they’re complaining about.
Prioritization
I saw a Ted Talk by an emergency room doctor who is NEVER in crazy busy mode, even though she might see patients who are in critical condition from gunshot wounds or vehicular accidents. How can that be?
Well, they prioritize by degree of urgency. Dr. Darria Long refers to it as triage. You don’t have take care of everything at once. A very simple example of this is using a traffic light coding system:
🚨 Red - Life threatening
🔶 Yellow - Serious, but not life-threatening
❇️ Green - Minor
They prioritize the reds first, then move onto the yellows and finally the greens. If they are working on a green and a red comes in, guess what happens? that’s right, they’ll stop what they’re doing and shift priorities to the red.
Stop treating everything as if it’s urgent and life threatening.
Because not all of us work in emergency rooms, our daily activities may not involve life-threatening situations, so perhaps a more relatable example could be to focus on the three to five activities that will really move the needle in our business.
How much time will each of these activities take and how much revenue (or impact) will each produce.
Plan your week and your day to work on these important activities and set aside some tome to check back on your progress, have team meetings as well as calls with clients, emails and text messages.
Observable metrics
Now I must also give an important warning. Not everything can and needs to be measured on a balance sheet.
I wrote a blog post titled Embrace activities that don't look like work but are actually very productive
Setting aside time to come up with ideas, time to spend with friends, time to relax and free your mind as well as for building relationships with family and colleagues is VERY important for our mental health and also to our productivity.
Activities like
- Dinners with colleagues
- Walks
- Attending events
- Travel
- Reading
- Listening to music
- Working out
- Meditation
Should also be a priority in your weekly activities as they can improve our mood and mental clarity. If large part of what we do is making decisions, having a clear mind and a positive attitude can do way more for the quality of the decisions we make than making decisions while "crazy busy"
images in this post created using Midjourney and edited in canva
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
This is really good advice. The stoplight analogy is very clever, but I think a lot of people need to do a better job of classifying all the things they do correctly first. I can see them putting spending time with family, proper sleep and exercise, and time for themselves in the green light instead of the yellow.
The traffic light system is one that is used by Dr. Darria Long in the emergency room to prioritize patients. The message here is not to treat everything as life-threatening, otherwise your stress hormones rise and your executive functions in your pre-frontal cortex decline, your memory, judgment and impulse control deteriorate and the brain's areas for anger and anxiety are activated.
One of the most common things people treat like an emergency is text messages. I say set aside time in your day to do uninterrupted deep work and also set aside time to deal with text messages. Just don't treat everything as an emergency.
That is true. I also read in another article that it can take more than 5 minutes for one to recover their focus if they are distracted/disturbed from it.
A very thoughtful piece. When you hit the street in the morning, you see everyone rushing to somewhere. They even have a name for it - rush hour. Why is everyone almost always in a hurry? Some things are better enjoyed when not in a hurry - like spending time with family.
Great reminder about setting priorities and doing first things first. Enjoyed the piece.
It's a false sense of urgency that Dr. Darria Long talks about. Some people treat everything like an emergency, even the daily commute to work. Add to that the never ending lists of tasks... it's a recipe for a crazy busy day with lots of activities but no results.
Prioritizing tasks really helps manage the constant busy feeling. It’s a great reminder to focus. Thanks so much for this big brother
Yeah, get all those non-urgent, non-important activities out of the way and focus on high value activities.
Well said big brother
I just want to start getting back on track. I used to be an extrovert until the economy became worse and I just have to work my ass out to earn. To be very honest, I’m now richer but I lost all the vibe that keeps me alive.
Music is what I love most but I no longer listen to it, I no longer go out and all
I hope I get better on track. This is like an advice to me and I’d make use of it
Thank you!