The 3 Buckets: 🪣 Now 🪣 Next 🪣 Future
Provide clarity to mop up the messy middle of productivity.
Over the years I’ve tried many different systems to improve my personal productivity and to align my teams behind what we want to achieve. Many of these systems use advanced techniques but they all have a core around goals or rocks, and then dribble down into tasks.
You start off writing some larger goals at a strategic level. Then you break it down as you build a plan.
Inevitably you fall off the horse on the first or second instance you hit reality and tasks come up that are not aligned with your plan. How rude of the real world!
And whilst some systems work really well for managing tasks. The process for getting the higher level projects and goals setup isn’t as well oiled in many teams (including my own at times!), especially when working across many people.
Providing clarity in your own head and to those you lead, increases capacity & throughput.
To assist with this, I use 3 buckets to help provide the context of time and importance. Those 3 buckets are: Now, Next and Future.
Bucket 1 🪣 - Now
In bucket 1 are the items that are important today, and to be done with focus, presence and purpose.
Bucket 2 🪣 - Next
In bucket 2, the Next bucket, is what we are doing after the items in the Now bucket. Keep in mind that they are may not be perfectly sorted or prioritized. More on that soon! But you do want to have these on-deck.
Bucket 3 🪣 - Future
The Future bucket is the most important. What? how can it be? The Future bucket is not just what you do after next, in some sense, it’s a backlog to catch all the Great Idea’s that you have during the day that would otherwise distract you away from doing what’s important. Note that just because something is in this bucket, doesn’t mean it will get done. In some sense, items in the Future bucket are requests for Time, Energy, Attention & Money (TEAM).
Examples
I like the simplicity of having 3 buckets to give myself and those around me context of what I want them to do. It’s easy to make assumptions or expect folks to get what is your intent, but you can help them easily. Examples:
“Let’s get back to the customer now, then work on the new module next”.
“That’s a great idea, let’s put that in the future bucket and review at our planning session later”.
Prioritizing the Next
It’s important to prioritize the next bucket on a regular cadence, for me that’s a weekly process that goes in depth, and I regularly review it 3-4 times a week depending upon workload and projects. You’ll build a sense of how far ahead you need to prioritize and communicate that, look out for the signals.
Challenges
During our team planning sessions, asking everyone to prioritize projects into the 3 buckets is also interesting exercise. Often times you’ll see more projects in the Now 🪣 then are feasible to actually complete. It’s a good indicator that you’re setting yourself up for burnout.
Give these a try and see how you go, especially when trying to align your team quickly so you can get on with what’s important now.