When I was about 10ish, I had a different outlook on my “coming of age and double digits” I was thinking now I could play touch football in the Summer with my friends, and in Winter, I would try out for the rep netball team.
My parents always supported me; however, the reality was it was also time to start helping on our family farm, just like my older brother and sister.
It was not a “pocket money” kind of job. In my mind, I always thought about it as working to help contribute as a member of our family and to pay for the registration fees. – Which is more than fair when you think about how expensive kids are before they even start getting into hobbies.
I am not a fan of free work, but then I am also not a fan of working on frosty mornings down the farm pruning grapevines before school in Winter either.
What my childhood taught me, and something that has always been instilled in me, is “find a way to make it work”, it has to be done, so I needed to find my efficiencies to make the task more enjoyable.
For those who have not had the pleasure of pruning vines – it is precisely how it sounds—individually cutting every vine back to remove the stick and cut off any damaged vines. It’s not the easiest task on your hands, and yes, your hands do get tried and sore.
My brother and I would find ways to make the most out off of it. Before we started at the head-post we would walk down the row and prune out sections of 5-10m so when we got to them, we could use the time to stretch our fingers and give our hands a little “holiday” for a few meters.
When it comes to finding efficiencies in the workplace,there is no hard and fast rules.
There are a number of factors to consider like your teams strengths and weaknesses for example.
For my brother and I, it was strength and age. He had both but he knew I was struggling so we found a way to make our own process to keep the pace. For us the time resting our hands was what we would look forward to and it became a bit of a game.
Trust me when you are pruning 120m rows of grapevines, the little “holidays” we made for ourselves was something we looked forward to.
1. Flat level structure doesn’t work, in CanTicket you can assign a leader to a task so someone is always in charge
2. Create SOPs and checklists, especially if you have repetitive tasks
3. Keep your brief, comments and feedback in one or two places so nothing is missed or lost
4. Let your client know changing things post sign off, can come at a cost. Keep track of your work, so you can be paid for it.
Cassandra is the Founder of CanTicket.
CanTicket simplifies project management for busy teams invoicing time, with a cost-effective, easy-to-use all-one software business operations solution.
An old photo but still a good one, my big bro Mark and sister Rebecca on our family farm.
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