How can I work less hard and more smart?

Being lazy, I like to avoid work like the plague. When I first heard of Maual Labour I thought it was the name of a Spanish Musician! I really don't like to do hard or extra work...
So then, how can you get away with being "lazy" and still be effective and productive? The answer is, you gotta work smart. The following tools will help you achieve this:


What steps do I need to follow?
1. Identify the tasks that need to be performed. (Use a WBS - see later post).

2. Estimate the effort of each task
Give each task an effort measurment score occuring between 0.0 and 1.0. Where 1.0 is the greatest effort.

For example, copying the annual report by hand because the printer is broken.


3. Apply the impact of each task

Give each task a weighted value between 10 and 1 depending on how much of an impact it would have on the overall success.

E.g. Developing a prototype on the customers infrastructure using their data has an exteremly high impact versus telling them what we can do on a power point presentation.

Plot these values in a table as below. This will allow you to understand the impact contribution and effort associated with each task.

WB Task	Effort	Impact1 being greatest 5 being least	Smart Score
Interview Employees	0.5	3	1.5
Write up and deliver Results & Findings Presentation	0.2	3	0.6
Develop a Prototype for evaluation	0.9	1	0.9

Using the below chart we can start to place the tasks into their corresponding square on the chart. The numbers indicate the order in which we should perform these tasks.

	Low Effort	Medium Effort	High Effort
High Impact	1	2	3
Medium Impact	4	5	6
Low Impact	7	8	9