the death rattle of hustle culture
If you've been on my email list for the past month or so, you might remember me mention the book Slow Productivity by Cal Newport.
The TL;DR:
1️⃣do less
2️⃣obsess over quality
3️⃣work at a natural pace.
The book reflects on some of the greatest achievements in human history in art, science, ideas - and how the people who accomplished these feats (Jane Austen, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Isaac Newton, Jewel, to name a few) worked on them slowly, deeply, and over a long period of time.
As someone (like all of us) who suffers from the entropy of modernity and the pseudo productivity it has us all addicted to, this philosophy has become deeply meaningful to me.
Not only is slowing down in this way a small act of resistance to Capitalism and the (hopefully) current death rattle of "hustle culture",
it also just produces higher quality work.
And isn't that what we are all aiming for here? To delivery high quality work for our clients that we are proud of?
Every agency owner I meet is doing too many things.
Client communication, team coordination, project tracking, quality control - all of it!
Because if she doesn't, something falls through the cracks.
That's not slow and that's not productive!
That's frantic, and frantic does not produce your best work.
SO! I herby remove YOU, Dear Agency Owner, as the bottleneck and middle-person in Getting Shit Done in your agency, so AND your team have time and space to do that juicy deep and meaningful work.
Some of the ways we accomplish this:
💅🏻Mapping out more efficient ways to deliver the work - sending a well designed onboarding checklist to your client, scheduling ALL of the project meetings during the kickoff call, figuring out a thoughtful order of operations when it comes to passing work back and forth between the strategist and designer, etc etc etc etc!
💅🏻Utilizing basic automations to sweat the small admin tasks - like setting up all of your client's google folders before a new project, creating a new Slack channel for them, and triggering a new Project List based on a template that assigns tasks and due dates for you.
💅🏻Robust documentation ala a SOP Library - that stands for Standard Operating Procedures! SOPs include visual as well as written instructions, the purpose of the task, links to resources and tools needed to complete the task, and common questions a team member might have. Building up a functioning SOP library takes time, but the more you can contribute to it, the more time and headache you save over time.
No more wasting time asking around on how to complete a task - or worse - having to redo work because it wasn't done correctly the first time.
And when systems are in place, YOU, Dear Agency Owner, get to do the thing only YOU can do: sinking into that creative space where you get all of your best ideas and solutions.
Following my own advice: I'm taking on fewer clients than ever before.
I have TWO more spots left this year.
Is removing yourself as the bottleneck on your To Do list? 👉 APPLY TO WORK WITH ME.
