Do you sit at your desk to work, you have to face a mountain of activities and you don’t even know where to start?… It happened to me, a lot, and that’s why I ended up developing the tool that I present to you now: the Congas Diagram of Management of Chores.
It is an activity distribution system that will help you change this scenario, and the more so the more complex the mass of tasks you have to manage.
There are many efficient task management systems, but it goes without saying that in a matter like this there are no panaceas, there are also many people who are already perfectly efficient without them, thank you, and there are even individuals, as is the case of a good number of artists, who are highly chaotic and at the same time produce totally extraordinary works.
The lack of organization is not, of course, the only agent of imbalance when it comes to work, although it is one of the most important.
In any case, if you are among the people who feel that they would like to have a little more structure in their work system, here is this proposal.
The principle of the five great action nuclei
The Congas Diagram of Task Management is based on the idea that an individual’s mind manages to effectively manage up to five large groups of tasks throughout a day.
With this in mind, I’m going to talk a little about Jerry González, a Puerto Rican percussionist and one of the biggest names in Latin jazz.
And now you will say to yourself: “Great, but what is a man like him doing in an article like this?…”.
Well, watch the following video:
You will be able to see that he is playing… five congas, that is, that he is administering five action nuclei.
He also observes that of the five, the one that is closest to his body constitutes an organizing center of the movement, his hands project and retract in relation to the others starting from that center.
The fact that the artist has this structure of five cores well internalized in his mind allows him to apply energy to them in an extremely effective way, with a high level of control.
You can spread the beats evenly across all the drums, or concentrate for a beat on the first drum, or the second and fourth drums, etc.
In addition, he has the ability to play slowly and calmly or accelerate fully, and the movement is always flowing, always harmonic.
The Task Management Congas Diagram applied to a computer folder system
Let us now see how this image can be applied to the folder system on a computer, which could be, for example, that of the director of a production company:
We can see here 5 main folders, five big cores of tasks (whose name may well be written in capital letters).
Of course, each one will contain its own folders and files, but something you can also do is create subfolders outside the main folders, hierarchizing them through a 1 / 1.1 type numbering system. / 1.1.1., etc
But it would be a matter of creating these subfolders just for the tasks or activities that you carry out most frequently. The goal of this is to get to the files you need in as few clicks as possible.
Tree-structured folder system
The folder structure described in the previous point can be compared to that of a tree that generates branches from its trunk. Thus, when it grows, the structure grows, not the chaos.
We then obtain what is called a “dimensionable” structure, that is, one that grows and does not disintegrate during the process.
In this way, over time you will be able to accumulate as many files, folders, and projects as necessary without getting lost in a messy and shapeless mass of documents, since you will always be able to reach any of them with just a few clicks.
You will see that you manage to find even that document that you created so long ago, that you cannot locate using the search engine of your operating system because you do not even remember its name well, but since you have already put it in its proper folder following a rational criterion, then comes the “Ah, look! Is here!…”.
Congas Diagram of Task Management applied to a software system
Another possible way to apply the diagram is to do it on a set of software.
I am going to give as an example the software system that we use in the Translation and Localization team, where I work.
Here, the work model that each individual in a team of Translators needs to manage on a day-to-day basis is complex. Note:
Team and task management software is, of course, the organizing center of the structure.
Translation orders are received through it, which will be distributed to the members of the team.
Then we have two “congas”, the largest ones, which concentrate the mass of translation texts, and two other minor ones that focus on communication, external and internal.
The fact of assigning each “conga” a different size also allows visually hierarchizing the work cores.
The criterion for defining the size of each one is personal: its number of documents, the frequency with which it is acted upon, its importance in terms of results for the company, etc., can be taken into account.
Effects of the Task Management Congas Diagram on the mind
The Congas Diagram is basically an image that acts as a mental tool.
One of its most important functions is, of course, to help increase the of a work process, but personally I think that its main value consists in the state of emotional balance that it also helps to achieve while the person is working.
The following, then, are some of the possible effects on one’s own mental state that its application favors:
The Congas Diagram allows what could previously be perceived as a that was thrown at one, comes to be seen as a defined structure, with distinguishable parts, where attention can be focused without fear on certain points, at certain times and for as long as necessary, bringing this as a natural result an immediate reduction of the .
The reduction of stress allows, in turn, to recover that state where both the mind and the eye perceive things more clearly.
Without stress and with mental clarity, the action becomes more focused and coherent, a high level of energy is released and we also acquire the ability to act in an agile manner.
Our energy is no longer being sucked away by anxiety, remembering that states of anxiety deplete it very quickly.
Surely, at some point you have already had the experience of noticing that, for the same volume of work carried out throughout a day, if you acted under intense stress, you ended the day much more tired.
And, finally, the sum of all this also allows us to feel pleasure while we are managing our tasks, thus favoring the entry into what the psychology of happiness describes as a “state of flow”.
This state of flow is the state of mind in which you can act, to cite a few examples, a painter when he is painting, a writer when he is writing, a mathematician when he is immersed in the solution of a problem, an athlete when he is concentrating on his career etc.
The flow state usually occurs when the task is challenging and requires skill, but the person feels pleasure while performing it, with their mind highly focused on the here and now.
If you want a good visual (and sound) example, watch Jerry González again carefully in the execution of his music, what he is doing is very complex but he does not suffer at all, quite the opposite: he acts in a state that combines the enthusiasm and self-control.
This artist is also the ultimate example of someone who really loves what he does. To illustrate it, I am now going to tell a little anecdote about him:
For a time I lived in Madrid, and once I went to a concert of his in one of those glamorous Madrid jazz clubs.
That day, Jerry was sick with hepatitis and his strength was almost reduced to zero, with a fever, with a terrible malaise. But a moment before going on stage – they told me – he told his musicians: “If I die tonight, first I want to play…”.
He couldn’t even play the congas with his hands, he didn’t have the strength, he had to ask the drummer for some drumsticks and play with them, because that allowed him to get less tired.
It was one of the most magical concerts I have ever witnessed.
That said, if you want to know more about the state of flow and the psychology of happiness, that is, that area of psychology that does not focus so much on studying mental illness but on knowing what allows human beings to be Well, a good reference could be the work of the Bulgarian psychologist who devised the very concept of flow state.
The Flow State and ‘s Mantra IV: Fighting for the State of the Art
The concept of state of flux also has total affinity with ‘s Mantra IV: “Fight for the state of the art!”.
Note: For those who do not know, the Mantras are a list of 10 ideas from the business world that constitute the pillars of our company culture.
But what is “state of the art”?
It is that state in which the author of a work, of whatever type, reaches mastery, and the work in turn reaches the state of a masterpiece.
An especially important word from the phrase “Fight for the state of the art!” It is the word “struggle”, which reminds us that reaching the perfection of the work is a process, a process that requires effort and perseverance, that is, struggle.
By the way, no one needs to be an art genius to experience such states, all this can be experienced by a bricklayer, an accountant, a teacher, a cleaner, an engineer, etc., or, in short, by anyone to do their job.
Application Proposal
From here, I have no choice but to invite you to do the experiment of applying the Task Management Congas Diagram to your work process.
As I have already told you before, it is a tool, but what is a tool in the end? Nothing more than an object that applies force on another and modifies the state of the second.
Thus, when, for example, we take a screwdriver and apply force with it on a screw, the screw rotates.
The same thing happens here, the Congas Diagram is a tool, albeit a mental tool, and when it is applied to a mass of tasks, its mechanical effect is that they are simply structured, harmonized, and efficiency during work increases.
On the other hand, applying it will require a certain effort, of course. But… when has it not required effort to structure the unstructured?
If you dare, well, I suggest you start here: look at its graph, internalize it well, and apply it, for example, in the folder system of your computer.
The first consequence of this exercise is that it will force you to do a…
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