Here’s a good way to build capacity: every time you do something new, open a googledoc (or your searchable, annotate-able editor of choice) and do the following:
- Give it a name that you’ll be able to find in future, like – Howto Make a Transfer from OurBank
- Use headings and subheadings to give titles to key sections
- Use an ordered list (like this one) to list the steps
- I like using subpoints too
- Auto generate a table of contents
- Put it in the place where you’re likely to look for it when you need it – a folder labeled ‘Howtos and workflows’ or the folder that contains other stuff relevant to the document
Then…
At the very least, the next time you do that piece of work you have spec for the job, saving you from having to waste time clicking around trying to remember how you did it last time. This is especially true in settings like Indonesia, where things like online banking are still far from ‘peak usability’. The document is a gift to your future self.
At best, you have a document that you can give to someone else – a team member or a new volunteer, who can follow it step by step and do the job so that you can do something new. Pow! You’ve developed the ability to do two things concurrently – or at least, you will have after a few tries with the document and a bit of back-and-forward commenting on the document.
Write several of these documents, give the formatting a bit of a brush up and you’re on your way to a manual for your key processes.
This is a riff on some of the processes suggested by Michael E. Gerber in his classic The E-Myth Revisited, which will get a post of ten of its own one day.
It’ll help you with all 4 of Mike Michalowicz’s 4 D’s from Clockwork: doing, deciding, delegating, designing.
P.S. If it looks like I missed a day, I didn’t – had to unpublish and republish to make a change.