Photo credit to Kevin Bhagat

Minimizing the amount of metawork I do is something I learned from a coding channel. The specific topic was about why the channel's host doesn't use a lot of tools for his job. He mentioned that he used to use a lot of tools for coding, but that changed when he talked to someone who despised meetings and used as few tools as possible. The surprising fact was that he was more productive than most people at his job at the time. The reason he was more productive was that he was minimizing metawork.

What is metawork?

A good parallel for this is being busy vs being productive. If you're busy, you're doing a lot, but not actually getting a lot done. If you're productive you're getting a lot done, but you might be doing less. Metawork and work are of similar nature to this.

Getting work done is your goal, metawork is the work you do to do your work.

If you go running, you might have heard of something similar: it's not the shoes you have, but the distance/speed you run. If you obsess over choosing your shoes over actually achieving your goals for running, you're not going running, but shopping instead. You're doing metawork.

One other person who I've heard a concept from similar to this is Casey Neistat. He has mentioned in his vlog many times that it's not the camera that makes the film, it's the story. He puts it into words like this:

The best camera to use is the one you have.

How do I reduce metawork?

I'll bring a few examples how you can reduce metawork in various environments/situations.

School

Do not obsess over the notebooks, pens or binders you have - you're doing work you don't need to do. Focus on the structure of the content that you need to keep organised. Also, it's important to realize when you're doing too much work. If you're trying to find the perfect opening to your essay and have been at it for 30 minutes, you're doing too much work. Write a different part of the essay instead or do something else entirely. Your brain can make better connections and you might stumble upon a good opening while you're not even actually thinking about it.

Let your brain do work for you.

I've seen many people go nuts with their planners/timetables. Keep it minimal and simple to extend. If you're doing more work than required to keep your schedule in check, you're doing too much work.

Your schedule is a tool and a part of your journey, not your destination.

Keep it minimal and use something like the Bullet Journal system for your paper planner. If you prefer something digital, use a combination of Todoist and Google Calendar for example.

Work

We've all heard the following phrase in one form or another: "I have emails about emails about meetings about meetings about emails."

Stop. You're doing too much work.

Do not have meetings unless it's necessary. This is something we failed at during my member term at AIESEC - we had meetings when we didn't really need meetings. In addition, make sure if you have meetings, you're using that time effectively. An example that I heard from a friend: there was a meeting during which 15 minutes was actually discussing important stuff that was best discussed in a meeting and the following 45 minutes was spent on thinking of a name for the team's mascot.

This is a bad example of holding a good meeting. Do not do this.

Meetings need a clear purpose and content. The content should dictate the meeting, not the meeting dictate the content. Do not do it the wrong way around, it will decrease your whole team's productivity.

Now, about the infinite emails and meetings cycle. Email is horrible for team communication, please either use something like Slack or convince your leader to switch to something like Slack. It provides a good history of what has been talked about and speeds up communication with hundreds of productivity-centred features. It has tons of add-ons that connect to various services, which helps make your team more productive.

An example of switching to Slack making a team more productive was a school. They decided to switch to Slack for their communication and from what I remember their communication sped up, the number of meetings decreased and productivity went through the roof. Effective communication is key.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while metawork is important to an extent, it's important that the focus still stays on the actual work, otherwise, you are decreasing your productivity by the minute.

Good luck on your journey to increase your productivity and decreasing metawork.

Call to Action

Do you have any environments where metawork could be decreased? Do you know anyone who is obsessed with decreasing the amount of metawork required? Let me know in the replies below!