Sir, we just lost the main rear deflector shield. One more direct hit on the back quarter and we’re done for!
C3PO
Never let down your deflector shields. Tend to them and nurture them. They keep you safe from hits on the back quarter!
When thinking about how to protect your productivity, deflector shields are a marvellous tool to activate. Deflector shields can take many forms.
- Templates: If someone wants to dump work on you, make them format it in a way that forces due consideration on all aspects of the problem.
- Single-point-of-entry pipelines: Accept things in an inbox. Don’t give anyone access to put work in anything but the inbox. You choose what to pull into your workflow, and what to bounce back to the originator.
- “What’s the payoff”: Ask serious questions about expected ROI on your work. If it’s to make someone’s day a little easier, it better not come at the expense of making yours harder.
- Work in the work system, chat in the chat system: Make sure nobody can sneak work past your deflector shields by pinging you in a chat to do something. Work goes through the incoming templates section, not a chat message.
How you configure your deflector shields is up to you. The key is to develop a framework that protects you from fake work, so you can focus on doing work that matters.