The Work Compass: Increase Your Productivity

December 14th, 2009 | by LaSean Smith

Here’s a very simple framework that I use to drive organizational impact and productivity. I call it the Work Compass. You can keep the answers to yourself or share with your team. Regardless, you’ll do a better job staying on track and filtering out distractions if you spend 2-3 minutes getting these questions answered before you jump into a project or task. The time you spend on this is important. Two to three minutes is all you need to get in the right direction. Five minutes max. Seriously. Write the answers down. Print them out. Whatever. Just put them somewhere visible while you’re doing your thing. I personally take this to the extreme, but event casual use can get results.

The Work Compass. Get on that.

• Why are you doing this?
• Who is it (ultimately) for?
• What is the deliverable?
• When is it due?
• How are you going to execute?