Have you ever found
yourself working on several unrelated things that suddenly seem to come
together? 

I believe we are all more
productive when we find similarities in apparently non-similar tasks and, as a
result, we’re able to apply the same effort to multiple activities.

I’m not talking about
multi-tasking – when we split our effort among different tasks. 

This is more like pattern
recognition.

At one point in my career
I was working on building a program management function in a publishing
company. At the same time I was co-chair
of a task force charged with determining how we would digitize, store, and
reuse previously created print content.  

The two efforts had
nothing in common – or did they?

The content management
group would need to create a program and projects within it in order to act on
their findings. 

The program function would
need to test drive its templates, framework, and processes with real
projects.

Hmmmm… 

I could use the content
management projects to flesh out the program management function!

My theory is that we all
bring our unique skills and experience to everything we do. 

We look at every situation
we encounter with this frame of reference and – if we try – we find patterns.

When we use those patterns
to manage our workload, we become more productive.