How Slow Productivity Can Help You Incorporate Program Evaluation
La Sagrada Familia under construction
Building off the insightful posts Emily wrote about evaluation project management, we’d like to zoom out and consider the bigger picture of managing workload in general. We know that evaluation is one of many pieces that managers and directors are juggling. Adding evaluation to your plate can feel like yet another expectation, and can be overwhelming. But, there are ways to streamline and embed this work into your existing schedule to make it easier.
One major thing to consider is the overall workload you carry, including what is critical, what is optional, and what should be cut. I’ve been inspired by a new book, Slow Productivity, written by Cal Newport, a nonfiction author and professor of computer science at Georgetown University.
Cover image of “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout” by Cal Newport
Appropriately titled, the book centers on the idea of slow productivity, a way to mentally restructure your workload to focus on the most important pieces and cut the noise. It talks about three main principles: (1) Do fewer things, (2) Work at a natural pace, and (3) Obsess over quality. Newport was also recently interviewed for the Liz Moody Podcast, a research-backed wellness podcast. In his interview, Newport emphasizes the criticality of simplifying your workload, prioritizing your top goals, and slowing down.
These ideas can be applied to incorporating evaluation into your workload. The book is full of handy productivity tips. Here are a few of our favorites:
Plan in terms of years not months. Newport suggests planning work several years in advance rather than in the short-term, to allow you to prioritize your goals and see your progress build slowly over time. You might decide to map out the next several years of your programs in terms of evaluation. What will your approach be? Evaluate each program, each year? Select a program to focus on each year, while collecting some data on the others? Design a “plug and play” model for evaluation that lets you take your foot off the gas once it is in place?
Give yourself more than enough time. Mentally doubling the time you anticipate spending on a project to allow for more realistic timelines ensures you have the time you need to accomplish your goals without rushing. It might seem excessive, but how many times have we all found ourselves crunched against a deadline? In many ways embarking on new projects is like remodeling a house - you don’t always know what you’re going to find until you’re in it. What might employing this recommendation look like in your evaluation project management? Perhaps you double the time you anticipate needing for the evaluation plan development, or the weeks you’ll be conducting interviews. Building out large blocks of time can also help you work more efficiently without having to constantly switch between the contexts of different projects and demands.
Simplify administrative work. Budgeting for software that allows you to do your work more efficiently can be a game-changer. Newport cites a story about an entrepreneur who subscribes to over 50 different services. You probably won’t need to go that far, but it is worth considering if investing in some additional software could help you ease your administrative burden. In evaluation project management, you might decide a task management program, like Asana or Trello, is the ticket. Or maybe you’ll want to subscribe to qualitative analysis software to help you code more efficiently (we’re partial to Dedoose - see Emily’s breakdown of a few of these tools in our previous Insights post).
Hire professional service providers. Newport also suggests outsourcing tasks that are not directly within your wheelhouse, as treading in these unfamiliar waters can drain your time and energy. This is something we at Improved Insights recommend as well. We work with many other professionals (such as accountants, graphic designers, website designers, and more) to allow us to focus on what we do best - research and evaluation. For evaluation project management, you might choose to work with a consultant team like ours, or work with other professional service providers to give you more time to build your evaluation capacity in-house.
Limit your work to three projects at a time. Maybe the most radical of his recommendations, Newport suggests focusing your attention on just three projects at a time to avoid context switching and the cognitive load of holding more projects at once. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Just three? Impossible.” That was my reaction at first as well. That was until I started thinking in terms of “what does ‘at a time’ mean exactly?” Perhaps you hold yourself to three different projects a week. Perhaps three a day. Perhaps three in a certain block of time you set aside - even a few hours. Over at Improved Insights, we like to batch our work. Sometimes this means committing a whole day to just one client project, even avoiding responding to non-urgent emails. Other times, this means sketching out the week at a glance, picking three top-priority projects per day, and working on those first. In evaluation project management, you might think in terms of quarters or months. Maybe you decide that December is the month you’ll (1) review your evaluation practices from the past year, (2) determine what evaluation priorities you’ll focus on in the next year, and (3) redesign your participant survey. Picking just three priorities helps keep overwhelm to a minimum.
At Improved Insights, we are always seeking wisdom that informs and improves our practices. Slow Productivity was a thought-provoking read and would be great for anyone looking to challenge their assumptions on what it means to be productive. We hope that heading into the holiday season (which is overwhelming in its own right!) these suggestions help you think about your workload in a new light. Maybe they will even help make incorporating evaluation into your work that much easier!
References:
Newport, Cal. (2024). Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. Portfolio.
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