What is donkey work?
Hauling dirt is donkey work. Labor intensive but inefficient. And at the end of the day there’s very little to show for all that effort.
Here’s an example of an experienced project manager (PM) generating donkey work:
PM: I’ve scheduled a scrum every morning at 10am.
Me: What’s a scrum?
PM: It’s a status meeting. I get to keep track of where everyone is at.
Me: So can we not tell you that over email?
PM: It’s only a scrum, Vinit.
That’s how we suck ourselves into donkey work. One stupid scrum at a time. If I didn’t have to waste time half an hour in the morning meeting everyone for the benefit of one PM—who ironically is supposed to make our jobs easier—I’d probably get more done. Let’s save meetings for decision making shall we?
Real work is about kicking butt.
But this is not an essay about real work. I’m going to stick to the point with some more examples of donkey work. Mind you, many of these examples are specific to advertising and but I’m sure many people can relate to them.
Throwing hours at a bad brief
You wont get much accomplished working off of a poorly written brief, but you can tell your peers how spent all night at the office filling out reams of A4 pages. It’s a lot like building out more storage space instead of reducing the clutter.
Instead, question the team that came up with the brief until they can deliver a real insight or at least something on the page makes sense.
I once received a brief for a videogames that said the single most important thing we need to say is “Brothers till the end”
Wait. What? That’s not an insight. That’s copy from the DVD case.
If you can’t get answers from the people who wrote the brief then try and write a good brief yourself.
Answering your emails immediately
Most emails have a false sense of urgency. Someone just had a mind fart and shot off an email (because it’s easy). If the recipient is you then, you will leave all the thinking work aside to respond. Who am I to point to fingers. I do this all the time. It’s better to just close your email for a while. I’ve started using a program called rescuetime. It works!
Doing banner ads
Ok, I’m going to spare the advertising agencies here. They are filling a need. Like Lockheed building fighter jets to supply a war. But people in marketing know deep down that banner advertising is fundamentally wrong. Whoever came up with the idea of selling banner advertising space is a fucking genius.
Can you imagine the conversation?
Banner media guy: I’m going to show you an ad space that’s easy to ignore because it doesn’t interrupt people and the only people who will click on it are housewives in the Midwest. It would cost you 5 million dollars a year.
CMO: Yeeah! Let’s do it!
Clearing disk space on your email
Disk space is really cheap. According to Wired magazine, it outweighs the time spent by even the lowest paid employee to clear out his inbox. Yet we get emails from IT saying “Your inbox is full. Please waste time clearing it.”
Resending files
If you have a terrible filing system or a broken system to search files, you will constantly try to look for stuff all over the computer. When you don’t find it, you will send an urgent email to the person who originally sent it. “Can you please resend?” This leads to more donkey work. See point number two about ‘Answering emails immediately”
Doing timesheets
I’m sure my finance department is going to blacklist me for pointing this out but doing timesheets is again a waste. If your job is of some creative nature, you will have no idea how time you spend coming up with an idea.
If managers have a system of allocating hours to employees, can we just have a program that automatically fills them out?
There’s a real opportunity for building a really elegant app ($$$) that can this timesheet thing a whole lot easier.
Filling out expense reports
If your company’s goal is to save costs then expense reports are great. Expense reports are like rebates. 50% of people will never do them. They would visit the dentist.
If your company wants to increase productivity then get rid of expense reports.
My suggestion for companies who want to get more productivity and happiness from employees. Hire cheap finance interns who will organize your receipts and get employees cash at the end of the month. Employees will write about it in blogs like this one and more employees will come knocking at your door.
Doing things twice
I did some donkey work while writing this article. I had previously written some bullet points on what is donkey work on a notebook. But I misplaced the notebook. So here I am but here I am, racking my brain, trying to recall those points again.
Donkey!
In the next essay, I’m going to talk about what isn’t donkey work. You’ll be surprised at how many instances we believe are a complete waste of time are actually the most productive.
The points mentioned here are my personal opinion, so please with do not argue with me (donkey work). But feel free to add any points I may have missed. Thanks!
