3 Easy Steps To Streamline Your Project Workflow

As Makers, we want to make a ton of different projects. One of the best ways to set yourself up to make more projects more quickly is to streamline your project’s workflow.

Step 1: List Every Task Needed to Complete The Project

Starting pretty basic, right? But hear me out.

Grab a notebook, paper, or a Notion page and think about every task, no matter how little, that you will need to accomplish to finish the project. You’ll want to get as granular as possible to be successful. Don’t worry about the order quite yet, just make your list and make sure you’re not missing anything.

Putting all your thoughts on paper alone will help clear your head and let you use your brain to focus on making the best project possible instead of worrying you’re missing something.

Step 2: Order All Major Tasks That Have To Be Done In Order

Your master list from Step 1 is probably a little messy and disorganized, but we’re about to clean it up.

Grab a clean sheet of paper or digital note and list, in order, the major steps of your project. Once you have your major task list, go through your list from Step 1 and add every item under one of the major steps. It will also be helpful to put the individual tasks in order under each major step.

An organized and ordered list is fairly streamlined, but we can do even better.

Step 3: Identify Similar, Non-Blocked Tasks That Can Be Done Together

Starting with your clean list, we know some individual tasks and steps are blocked by preceding ones, but not everything.

Put a mark next to each task within each step that is not blocked, meaning you could take action on it almost immediately. Inevitably, you’ll find similar things across major steps that could be done together. Put a number next to each that could be done together, then try to find even more that might all need to wait for one or two other things to be finished first.

You now have a list that is clean, ordered, and grouped so you can make the most of your time in the workshop.

The magic of ordering and identifying tasks that can be done together is that you can keep moving on your project in multiple stages without ever getting lost or missing steps.

While each step seems very basic, very few makers actually do take the time at the start of a project to lay the steps and tasks out. It seems too easy. I promise that a little extra time at the start of the project will save you time, and trips to the hardware store, in the long run.