The Importance of Meta Work
This article is going to sound like it only applies to a small percent of people, but trust me when I say that it applies to everyone. Today I want to talk about meta-work, which is the work you have to do to get ready for the “real” work. If you’ve ever had to clean up a data set, or put your budget numbers all in one column, or research who will be in a meeting with you, then you’ve performed meta-work. You had to do those tasks in order to create an analysis no one would understand, determine who was spending all of your budget $’s, or figure out whose butt needs the most kissing. All essential tasks to get to a successful outcome, but usually difficult to explain the time investment to your manager. This article will give you some suggestions on how to plan for, and communicate to others about, your meta-work.
The most important thing to understand is that meta-work is just as important as the tangible projects based on the meta-work. You can’t cook a meal without preparing the ingredients unless your meal is just a pile of raw foods near one another. I believe that’s called Crudités and not lazy salad pile, which is a missed opportunity in my book. Since our prep work is important, we need to budget time for it as well as any roadblocks that might pop up along the way. Don’t skip this step. Delegate what you can, divide and conquer if you need to, but don’t push ahead with the project until you’re prepped. Garbage in doesn’t always result in garbage out. Sometimes garbage in results in hours of tedium trying to piece things together in order to create a pretty output. Your boss is happy, but a tiny bit of your will to live is now gone forever.
The second most important thing to understand is that other people won’t understand where your time will be spent. You say something like “it will take about 5 hours to build that report once the data is ready” and your boss heard “blah blah 5 hours blah blah”. Don’t assume that your audience understands your assumptions on how long something will take. They will hear a number and hold you to it, even with all of your hemming and hawing about the different scenarios. (Fun fact — the words hem and haw share the same origins as um and huh). Your mission is to pad your timeline to give yourself a buffer in case the unforeseen does happen. “But Philip”, I hear you whine, “how do I know how to pad my timeline if I’ve never done something like this before”. And to that I say, “Uncross your arms and pull in your lower lip and I’ll tell you”. When in doubt, double the amount of time on the steps you can currently estimate. You might still run out of time, but the delay will be much smaller than it could have been. If you don’t know how long anything will take, then mumble “a few days” and hope they say okay.
The third most important thing to understand is that meta-work is usually an excellent automation opportunity. The data you are prepping today will probably be very similar to the data you need to prep for next month’s report. The people you’re looking up on LinkedIn will probably cross your path again in the future. Do the work once whenever possible. There are temporary employees, macros in Excel, data manipulation tools like Knime, even programmers you could pay to design and build a process for you. The question I want all of you to ask is how can someone or something do this prep work for me next time. Don’t resign yourself to a life of repeated efforts. Build it once, and you can enjoy the rest of that padded timeline you were able to get.
Meta-work is fundamental to what each of us can accomplish, but we all have a bad habit of ignoring, diminishing, or dismissing it. It’s a lot easier to point towards the finished output as your show of progress vs. the hours behind the scenes prepping. Embrace the journey. And embrace the idea of having someone help you out with that meta-work moving forward. How else do you think your boss got promoted last time?
-Philip
