#FastClip19Q1 — Letter to the Founder — Improving Management and Productivity — Analysis for Why FastClip didn’t appear in any social (world-based) radar and I the feeling nothing was delivered in 2018

Logging and tracking projects worked nice for certain projects

The practice of logging/tracking was a nice thing while it didn’t solved success for all projects. In recognition of a certain degree of contribution, it enabled Marcio to have a clear idea about the projects he worked on for the entire year of 2018.

As examples, Marcio had projects categorised as hobbies, as learning, and also as professional consulting services. For the “labs/tomato” example, where Marcio decided to learn about planting organic tomatoes, the project took about 4 hours. For the system and method to provide automated irrigation to plants, it took about 6 hours. For the artisan pizza learning, about 4 hours. For the led-based candlelight, about 9 hours.

Many other projects had tracking and an index to track each event and all events appeared under Marcio’s calendar. Probably Marcio spent about 1–2h per week managing his calendar . The calendar and productivity management was not really accounted.

Larger projects such as the startup, FastClip, didn’t happened in measurable or perceived ways while other projects (not exactly small only) happened

While smaller projects could be measured, and completed to the point that Marcio was happy, larger projects such as Fastclip didn’t. This could be, of course, the very fact that FastClip is comprised of a lot of unknown elements — full of hypothesis and works that don’t exactly are all going to yield something.

But that seems to not be the main reason for the sense of failure. One perception is that Marcio does not feel that he could properly remember his precise progress in terms of deliverables for Fast Clip. On the other hand, for the projects such the ones categorised as hobbies, much progress was felt.

Another example of a project that provided a good sense of traction was the 16h/mo work that Marcio sold for a technology company in his city. In total, for the entire 2018 year, the project probably took about just 208 hours and it worked like a charm using about 16–20h per month. It wasn’t easy: Marcio had to learn about modern front-end technologies, about server side, UX, and more. So both smaller hobby projects and even a 200h+ complex project happened.

General learning and criticality improved

Book reading and continuous learning helped Marcio to improve the level of critical thinking necessary to be able to improve project development and personal development.

It was clear that Marcio developed a better inclination for courses and reading materials that were more strategic — they provided a helping hand for ongoing issues and a sense of broader and strategic view.

It was clear that Marcio started to read book in new ways, like establishing a contract with certain authors, a sort of relationship like “engaging with a board of directors”. As an example the book that Marcio purchased in December of 2018, OKR book entitled “Measure What Matters” is being taken as a serious read, far from being an entertaining or procrastination effort. Thus, there is a constant effort to move the ideas from resources of learning to the realm of daily routine needs. This review, for example, is probably pushed by authors/advisers such as Tim Ferris, John Doerr, Andy Grove, Reid Hoffman, Reed Hastings, etc.

Motivation had a role in the level of achievement of projects but it was not the inflection point of causality for better work and sense of achievement

Before detaching motivation from the story, Marcio recognises that motivation played a role among the projects that worked. As an example, the consulting work had motivational factors such as 1) people involved, 2) money involved 3) requirements 4) pains from the customer/user/demand side. For the smaller, hobby projects, motivation seemed to be related to the visualisation of goal — to see the garden irrigation automated; to make but also eat a nice pizza made with Italian 00-sized wheat; or to light the room with the led-based candle that simulates the flickering of real candles.

On the other hand, the motivation was not the solving key element

That because Marcio believes that he was always, constantly, motivating himself with use cases, and interactions and learning around FastClip (the project that didn’t work) — there is a huge amount of amazing meetings related to FastClip that was incredibly inspiring. Thus, inspiration and motivation along seemed to not contribute. Actually a lot of inspiration and too many cases seemed to have caused confusion.

Attempting to craft a line — That Motivation, Learning, Planning, Delivering, and Feedback were inflection points for success

• When motivation guided next shorter deliverables, short-term goals —it seemed to work. The successful projects were the ones that a) yes had motivation but also had b) focused short-term goals. For the tomato, he needed to learn how to cut. For the pizza, he had to understand about the wheat kinds. For the soap, he had to learn about the safety aspects. For the consulting, he had to organize/plan the requirements from the customer to become architecture.
• Learning, in the middle, shaped next stages — for the successful projects none of them had 100% planned requirements. Thus, it was consistent that Marcio had to learn and was facing unknown; thus he changed next steps too. But a light, a connecting curve, seemed to be present, always. Or like a carrot, it changed the spec but it was there giving something next to be achieved.
• Size of deliverables in alignment with functionality expectation — the size of deliverables seemed to be key. For all the success cases, from the ones that took 5–10h to the 210h year long project, they were completed by smaller chunks and each chunk project solved something real — it was like mini goals. It was not like working multiple projects with non functioning milestones that would eventually connect by chance.
• Planning and design emerges — all of the success cases had planning in the sense of design work, hard work. It was like based in prior short milestone, that had learning involved, Marcio wrote the next step to the next session. He also allowed a room for learning without much precision, to solve the problems with a wider view. This relates to a theory that working with something you don’t think you know it can be better.
• Numbers were not explicit but maybe a measurement was related to the short goal — the OKR literature talks about numbers, as in measurable elements for a job to be done, for measuring and evaluating — in alignment with Andy Grove/Peter Drucker style for managing by objectives. While Marcio does not acknowledge that part in his small world, he recognised that short-based goals were in a way measurable, as in touchable. Examples were: to learn one video about X. To plant Y elements. To build an application and send to the other peer to publish at google play.

Recommendations

• Set higher objectives and work, hard/precise/hours, in breaking down to smaller objectives contributing to the main:
• Break down smaller objectives, using narratives, in short term projects with goals and milestones that serves as motivation, learning opportunities, and planning/feedback system for redesign;
• Make the objectives, and key results to encounter life (customers, partners, investors, new insights, examples, etc).
• Learn how the business model and culture connects. This is about searching the right kind of culture (such as this line of writing is trying to search) that pushes the specific kind of goals ahead. Certain projects touch the world and the world, with its interaction elements speaks in a certain way. The culture key is the inflection model allowing that specific goal/project to rise. One unique culture model can’t fit all — keep an eye that you are solving a culture key that will unlock an inflection point in productivity and value.
• Maintain the cold learner problem solver, analysis and narrative way of working — Marcio is specially proud about his new narrative approach for delivering. He started to write much more as a means to reflect. This aligns with the Amazon and other cultures such as Netflix.