Building Joy into Your Job

Tis the season to be stressed out – end of year planning, preparing for time off, holiday shopping, taking care of family – the to do lists never seem to end! Let’s be honest, sometimes it is hard to be motivated and excited about working when you are overwhelmed by all the things that have to be done, especially as an Admin who has so much responsibility and never-ending requests from end users. I struggle with this, specifically the past few months which included Dreamforce, my wedding, travel, and getting that nasty cold that was going around. Feeling like I couldn’t get anything done made me feel frustrated, so I spent some time thinking about ways to tackle my problem and discovered a few things that I hope will help you.

Joy vs. Impact Matrix

I’ve been reading a lot in the past few weeks about how to better manage work, and one of the most striking concepts I’ve learned was from this article, which introduced the idea of a joy vs. impact matrix. The author suggests you should plot your tasks on this matrix, and then see which tasks you can delegate or change ownership from the low-joy half of the matrix.

When I filled this out, I realized few things:

1. Things I get the most joy from are not necessarily as low-impact as I thought. Spending a few minutes to chat with my teammate in the office about something silly does wonders to lift spirits and make work more fun. I smile, they smile, and then our many meetings together don’t seem so daunting. Less than 5 minutes for a little more joy for the rest of the day is a high-joy/high-impact activity.
2. There are some things in my low-joy/high-impact box that I can automate. Every time we publish content, I often forget to post about the new content in chatter so that the rest of the company can share it out. By creating templates and reminders, I now have a plug & play formula that I can use to do this important internal marketing in less than 5 minutes.

Not only did these first few realizations instantly make me happier, but it lifted my entire perspective on how to manage all my projects. For every task, I think about the joy/impact levels and where it sits in my matrix. I still have a lot of tasks in each box, but now I can prioritize them with this methodology, focusing on the high-joy/high-impact ones first.

Admin Impact Matrix

The joy vs. impact matrix seems strangely familiar to me because it is very close to a matrix that we used to share in a presentation we did about Admin best practices, where we describe how to make the biggest impact as an Admin.

The Admin impact matrix helps us figure out where to spend our time as an Admin, focusing on high-impact/easy-to-adopt goals to make our implementations successful. That means we should prioritize things like enabling mobile for our sales team, or using custom lightning home pages for different user groups instead of adding each field that users request.

If you put these two matrices together, I think it makes a powerful case for building joyfulness into your job as a Salesforce Admin. Every Admin I know gets joy from having a positive impact in an organization, and this framework helps us figure out how to do that by organizing our tasks. Just a few weeks ago, I hosted a webinar with Jodi Wagner, who talked about how she did this while she was a solo Admin setting up a center of excellence. She was examining all her Admin tasks, quantifying how much time she spent doing each one. As a result, she created her own version of the joy vs. impact matrix.

Jodi realized that she enjoyed acting as a trainer and business analyst, being a Salesforce subject matter expert, and managing new initiatives, but she didn’t enjoy acting as a help desk, being a production support manager, or administering new users. This categorization helped her create her business ask for more support from her company and freed her up to focus on the tasks she gets joy from, propelling her career and improving how her company runs Salesforce.

Resolve to Live More Joyfully!

Now it’s your turn. Take a few minutes and map out a few of your current to-do list in the joy vs. impact matrix. Then overlay the Admin impact matrix. Which tasks are in the high-joy/high-impact box? Those are the tasks you should find ways to prioritize. For the tasks in the low-joy/low-impact box, see if there are ways to automate or delegate them. Other people might feel differently about those tasks if given the chance. How are you going to use this methodology to plan your 2017 goals? Share them with me @gilliankbruce!