80. How to Do a Work Sprint (And Make Massive Progress Fast)
Episode 80
Got a big project you’ve been putting off? Or one that isn’t moving as quickly as you’d like? In this episode, I walk you through one of my favorite strategies for intense productivity: the work sprint.
I’ll define what a work sprint is, walk you through exactly how to set one up so you don’t crash (logistics, mindset, and all), and share real-life examples of using this method to get massive things done.
What You'll Learn
▶ What makes a task right (or wrong) for a work sprint
▶ How to plan meals, logistics, and materials in advance
▶ How to avoid burnout while still making real progress
▶ The #1 mindset shift that makes a work sprint enjoyable
▶ Common mistakes to avoid (I've made them!)
▶ When not to use this method (like for studying)
🔗 Resources + Episodes Mentioned:
▶ Episode website (with transcript)
▶ SchoolHabits University (Parents, go here)
▶ SchoolHabits University (Students, go here)
▶ Episode 27: How to Get Things Done with a Power Hour
▶ Episode 14: Pomodoro Technique
▶ ✏️Get my FREE parent training: How to Help Your Student Handle School Like a Pro — Without Study Frustration, Assignment Overwhelm, or All the Drama (If you’re the parent of a high school or college student, this training is for you.)
-
The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them 😉
How to Do a Work Sprint (and Make Massive Progress Fast) 80===
Kathryn Azevedo: [00:00:00] Well, hello and welcome to episode 80 of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. I'm Katie, and like many of the episodes on the show, today's topic is inspired by something in my own life. Today we are talking about the concept of a work sprint. Don't worry if you don't know what it is, uh, it's 'cause it's not really a real thing.
I will explain all of that. I am currently coming off of the back end of a significant work sprint and I figured that it would make a great topic for the show. [00:00:30] It is something that I have done probably as far back as as I can remember, but. Most specifically college. All right. I mean, I can remember before college, but that's when I really started to understand that this was a thing and it was a pattern and a strategy, and I'm gonna share some of those experiences today.
But honestly, I only recently started calling it a work sprint when I heard someone else use the term. To refer to something similar. And I was like, Hey, well that's, [00:01:00] that's what I'm doing. So here we go. And by the way, links for today's show, um, and everything that I mentioned, as well as a complete transcript can be found at learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/80.
And today we are talking about what a work sprint is, how to set one up and do it in a way that you don't burn out. 'cause that is a very, very real possibility. Some scenarios in which you might need to do or want to do a work sprint. And then some common mistakes that people make [00:01:30] using the strategy, including mistakes that I myself have made in the past.
So if you're a student or a working professional who has ever been confronted with a big project or a goal and it's really hard and you have to get it done, or you really want to make some massive progress on it, a work sprint might be just what you need. But brace yourself because it is not easy and it is not a strategy to be used [00:02:00] every day.
Intrigued you should be. So let's get started.
Kathryn Azevedo: All right, my friend. So [00:02:30] obviously I should start off with defining what a work sprint is. Um, I define it as an extended period of time over the course of several hours, over a day, like hours or even several days where you rally every brain cell at your disposal. You lock in, you block out everything, you put your headphones on and you work on a single project.
Now, some of you listening to that description might think it sounds terrible, and I get that. But as I said at the top of this episode, a work sprint is not [00:03:00] something that we do every day. It is something that when used strategically can not only be really effective, but dare I say, enjoyable and think about the word sprint. If we're thinking in the context of running a sprint requires maximum exertion. You're so focused on putting one foot in front of the other that you hardly even notice your surroundings. But then there's also jogging. There's a time and a place for a nice leisurely jog in which you're still moving forward, but at a slower [00:03:30] pace.
And you can pause to take a sip of water or like sit on a park bench, smell a flower. Totally different vibe. And then there's a nice walk in, which is still moving forward, but much, much more, much slower and more flexible. And, and maybe I'll go here and maybe I'll go there and take, you know, sit on this park bench here.
You get the idea. But today we're talking about a sprint because there is a time and a place for a walk, a jog, and a sprint. Okay, so we have our definition down and it's [00:04:00] an extended period of time, at least several hours or maybe up to a few days where you're working on, you know, tunnel, VI tunnel vision on a single project.
Now, what might be some scenarios in which you would need or want to work? Sprint? Because like I said a second ago, sometimes it is more appropriate to jog, so to speak, and you know, everyone listening is in a different scenario. Some of you are students in high school, some are in college, some are in grad school.
Some are young working professionals. Some have been. You know, industry workforce, veterans for 30 to 40 [00:04:30] years. I have a wide range of listeners on this show. It's so awesome. So therefore though, there are an endless amount of scenarios, a variety of scenarios that one might use for a work sprint. But lemme give you some examples where I have personally used it and see if you can use that context to apply it to your own.
Okay? Absolutely. In college, during my senior year of college, I chose to write an independent thesis. And of course I wrote it about Jeffrey Chauser, the Clerk's Tale. And this was a year long independent project in which I wrote [00:05:00] a final thesis paper. Gosh, it's like probably over a hundred pages. And I presented it to a committee in order to receive honors at graduation.
And it was an immense project that I willingly took on because that tracks with my personality type. And I used this strategy of a work sprint, although at the time I didn't call it that. Um, but I used it probably once a month during my senior year.
There were times when I would lock myself up in the top floor of the beautiful library we had on campus. I would find an, um, empty, like [00:05:30] little study desk amongst the dusty stacks, and it was just me, my laptop, and my books. And I would go there in the morning after a good hard workout and I wouldn't come home sometimes until midnight.
And of course, I would stop for lunch and dinner, but it was just to grab a quick bite to eat, which I had planned ahead of time. I'll talk about that in a bit and then I would get back to it. Now I did have the luxury of not having smartphones back then as she old. Okay. But there were, so there weren't distractions like there are today and, and I do have a well-developed [00:06:00] skill of concentration, but I would also psych myself up and prep for these episodes, for these work sprints.
In a little bit. I'm gonna talk about how to actually do these and how to prepare for them, because without proper preparation, you might fade or crash after like an hour or two. Anyway, remember I said at the top of the episode that today's topic is inspired by something happening in my own life. And I probably, I think I mentioned this too.
I, I did just come up for air at the other end of a recent work sprint. This past [00:06:30] weekend. So I am in the process of creating something really cool and I really, really wanna get it off the ground by some arbitrary deadline I set for myself. So I used the strategy of a work sprint to make some massive progress on this project.
So just this past weekend, my daughter was at a camp out for the weekend and my husband and my son were up at my mom's lake house doing some maintenance work. And I had a day, a night and a day. To myself, [00:07:00] and if there's any parents listening, that is just pure deliciousness. Now, could I have chosen to spend that TA time like going to a spa or getting my hair done?
You know, if you know me, that is literally the last thing I would ever do. Like ever. So what did I do instead? I woke up early in the morning. I got a crazy hard workout in knowing that I'd be sitting on my bum for basically the whole day, and I did a work sprint all day Saturday until about 10 o'clock on Saturday night.
I went to bed and I had a good night's sleep, and I woke up Sunday morning [00:07:30] and I did the exact same thing all over again. Oh, I was so happy. I was so happy. But I prepared for it. It was intentional. And boy can I tell you that I made massive progress on this thing that I wanted to make massive progress on.
No distractions. I. I designed it so that there was hardly any possible way for me to not do what I set out to do. And again, I'm gonna talk about strategies in a little bit. Now, another time that I used to work Sprint was when I was creating School Habits University. I've talked about this [00:08:00] before. Well, I.
You know, obviously I've talked about school club, its university before 'cause it's an incredible program. But I believe it was either on this podcast or inside my course in one of the q and as I forget, but I think I shared this story where I had this, you know, a deadline of my uncle, a videographer, was gonna come to my house to film some of the lessons inside the course.
But I hadn't written all my scripts yet. So in that scenario, I had a very real deadline and I pulled off a two day work sprint in, in one of the weeks leading. Up to that deadline where I essentially locked [00:08:30] myself in my office and I banged out all of my remaining scripts for the course. And I don't think I ever would've been able to make that amount of progress in that short amount of time if I had tried any other strategy.
I mean, I did pair it with the Pomodoro technique for like a banger combo, but you get what I'm saying. The um, the work Sprint was the primary engine behind that amount of progress.
Okay, so you're not writing a thesis or you're not creating a new product. So what are some other scenarios for a work sprint? Well, it [00:09:00] could be a research paper. You could use a work sprint to brainstorm and create an outline and maybe a, um, a pro. Proposal, a project proposal for work. You could do a work sprint for writing a lab report.
You could do a work sprint for creating and updating all the SOPs at your company if that's, you know, in your job description. If you are an educator, you could use a work sprint to revamp some of your lesson plans and assessments before the school year starts.
If you're in the type of business where you have, you know, a whole bunch of [00:09:30] different clients, that's like so many different industries, but you could use a work sprint to finally get yourself organized with all your different client files and projects, whatever that looks like for your business. You could also use a work sprint if there's a big presentation that you need to make, either for school or for work.
I mean, sure, there's some scenarios in which you could take more of a walk or jog approach to some of these things, but there is also a time and a place for making massive progress in a short amount of time. Honestly, the possibilities are endless, but again, you have to [00:10:00] be so intentional about how you use the strategies.
Otherwise, it could be a total waste of time. You're not gonna get done what you want to get done, and then you're gonna end up feeling burned out at the end anyway, even though you didn't get the work done that you want to do. All right, so let's talk about how to set up and design a work sprint so that you get the maximum ROI from it.
Step one is to pick the date. Now, you might've thought that I would've suggested to pick the project first, but I usually pick the date [00:10:30] first, and it usually ends up being completely beyond my control. Like the weekend, last weekend where my daughter happened to be going camping, like to a camp out, and it happened to be the same weekend that my husband and son were going to my mom's like house to do maintenance.
And then when that happened, the first thought that popped into my head was, yes, a chunk of time. And I knew it would be perfect for the work sprint. Okay. Step two is to choose what project you are going to work on. This recent weekend, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what project I was going to work on because it was [00:11:00] like the one that I had been working on on a much slower pace.
But it was the one that I was like, ah, man, I would just love to, bite off a giant chunk of this. When I was in college, I only ever used work sprints for my senior thesis, I would use power hours and Pomodoro sessions. I talk about those in episodes 27 and 14 respectively. Those are other time management and time-based productivity strategies, and I would use those for other kinds of homework, but I only ever really used work sprints for my thesis.
So, [00:11:30] you know, pick your project. What is something on your plate that you either need to make massive progress on or you want to make massive progress on? And the key word is massive.
Because during a work sprint, we're not putzing our way through a few tasks. We are bulldozing our way through a project. You might not finish it, but you're bulldozing your way forward and at the end when you come up for air, you turn around and you see that very visible path that you bulldozed. You're in [00:12:00] a massively different place from when you started.
The progress is big. You feel good about it. You feel lighter. I mean, you feel exhausted, but you feel lighter because you are that much closer to the finish line. Okay, so you've picked your day and you've picked your task, or it could be days, multiple days, it depends. And you picked your task, and the next step is to organize the logistics.
Now, for me, this was the fun part. This is where you're gonna work out. Like what materials are you gonna need? How are you gonna handle your meals? Because [00:12:30] remember this is at like a minimum of several hours, you're going to need food. So for example, going back to my um, example from college, I would always go to this top floor of my library, like I said, to the same little study nook.
And I, I remember there was this one time in the winter and there was a snow storm and the library closed early and that was on like the day, or you know, the day and the night that I intended to do one of my work sprints in the library.
So it was like, oh my gosh, what can I do? Like I had to find an alternative because if you know me, the alternative was not to [00:13:00] cancel the work sprint. Gosh, no. It was to make it happen. Come hell or high water. So there was this weird little. Common space in the dorm at the time that it was like pretty quiet 'cause it was such a sparse and ugly and kind of like little swampy room that nobody ever used.
And that's where I did my work Sprint that night in the snowstorm. Could I have done it in the comfort of my dorm room? No, because that would not be setting myself up for success. If I set up to do a multi-hour work sprint in my dorm room, dorm room, where my [00:13:30] bed was, and all the things at my disposal to distract me, which let's face it, in the early two hun, two thousands, was it two hundreds, two thousands?
I didn't even have a TV in my dorm, but it would not have been a successful work sprint. So I brought myself to this weird little public space in my dorm building, and I cranked my most recent work sprint, I already told you, um, my house was empty, right? My family was away, and I totally could have done it in the comfort of my own home.
But then again, I would've been distracted by, I don't know, organizing a [00:14:00] closet, playing with a cat, or any number of things around the house. There's always things to do around the house. So for the majority of my work sprint on both Saturday and Sunday, I went to my professional office, which is in the same town where I live.
Did it make it a little bit harder to handle food? Did I have to like get a little more like preppy and plan? Yeah. I couldn't just walk into my kitchen and eat something. At lunchtime, I had to pack my coffee. Right. But figuring out. How you're gonna feed yourself during a work sprint is part of the logistics.
Um, [00:14:30] for my nighttime work sprint, I did return to my home to eat dinner and then I resumed in my home office, um, in my pajamas with the two cats and the dog, yes, worked out just fine. Um, speaking of food, I feel like this podcast just became about food, but it can be helpful to plan it so that you eat right before your work sprint.
So that you have at least a few hours of concentrated work before you need to even think about food again. So think about the hours that you're gonna be working. Do you need lunch and dinner? Do you need breakfast and lunch? Do you need all three? Do you need [00:15:00] lunch and a snack? Probably need a snack anyway.
If you don't plan for these things ahead, you're gonna get like two hours into your work and then realize you're hungry and then you don't have any food. So then you have to stop what you're doing and go get some food, and now you've broken your concentration. Now, obviously stop working when it's time to eat, but if you have to get up and drive somewhere to or prepare food, that's just not ideal for what we're doing in this particular strategy.
And then the other little details, like what do you need to bring with you? Do you need your laptop and your iPad? Do you need the novel you're [00:15:30] reading for a class or a bunch of client files? Do you need a bunch of index cards or sticky notes? If you're not quite sure and you're worried, then you might start working on, you know, a project and then realize you need something that you don't have, just do your best to prepare.
Depending on the nature of your work, you might wanna bring index cards, um, sticky notes, a notebook, highlighters, your device, anything there's a chance you would need. And if you're a student, just like bring your whole entire backpack just in case you know what I mean?
And then the next [00:16:00] strategy to maximize these work sprints, if you're gonna choose to do them, is to protect your work sprint.
So it's one thing to say, okay, this weekend I'm gonna, lock in, and bulldoze my way through some kind of project. And then you hype yourself up for it and you tell yourself that you're gonna do it. But then you get invited to go somewhere and you tell yourself, well, I can always do the work later.
And you know what? I'm not here to tell you how to prioritize or what you should prioritize. That's you not my job. I'm just here to remind you of how important it is to keep your [00:16:30] commitments to yourself. we need to keep our commitments to ourselves And remember this work sprint concept is not something that you're doing all the time, so I'm not saying choose work over social connection. Heck no. Social connection is like essential, absolutely essential. But if you're gonna do a work sprint like. I don't know, once a quarter, and the ideal time just presented itself for you to do a work sprint.
When you happen to have a project that you would love to make some massive progress on and you tell yourself you're gonna do it, [00:17:00] and then some opportunity comes up to go to dinner with a friend, we gotta ask yourself in this moment, which is more important, can you see your friend the next day? The more often that we make a promise to ourselves and then back out of that promise, the less we're gonna take ourselves seriously.
And then the easier it becomes for us to just toss aside our goals and our ambitions, you know what I mean? Now, obviously if you have scheduled a work sprint and someone you love needs help or is sick, or you have a child that needs caring for any of those big, legitimate exceptions, well [00:17:30] then yeah, drop everything and go do what you gotta do, obviously.
But when I do my work sprints, my family knows about it.
I tell my very understanding husband, Hey, I'm gonna be at the office from this time to this time. Well, you're doing yard work at the lake house. Right? Just so you know. Then I put my phone on do not disturb, and then I do my work. I kind like blackout come up for the end. Right? So just put it on your calendar like, like it's an appointment or a meeting, right?
We all do that. Tell who you need to tell, and if you're [00:18:00] attempted to cancel your work sprint because something more fun came up, tap into a different mindset.
All right. I have some, uh, common mistakes that I wanna share with you, but before I do, as I was sort of, um, going through this first part of the episode, I was reminded of a story that somebody told me I belonged to, like a, um, a really awesome business group and someone in there shared, I can't remember what the author's name, but there's some really famous author.
It's not like JK Rawlings. But it's somebody who's like a very prolific author. This is wild. This is luxury. And [00:18:30] like we don't all have the means for this. But when they were working on a new book, um, which is a massive progress, uh, project that requires a ton of concentration, they would book a. Ba, um, what's it called?
Not a back and forth, a two-way. Oh my God. A two-way flight. Um, to, they were like, you know, east coast to West Coast or whatever, like, I think it was like to New York, to la and they would take a flight, uh, nonstop to California and just work [00:19:00] and then take that exact same flight. Right back, like they would not stay in California.
So they're paying some wild amount of money to isolate themselves into this, you know, multi-hour. I mean, how long is it? I'm in Massachusetts, so maybe from New York to California. What is that like? I don't know, eight hours, seven hours? Maybe Seven, eight hours times two. So like a 15, 16 hour work sprint where they're isolating themselves in this environment that, [00:19:30] you know.
Prevents them from getting up and doing anything. You know, distracting. Like there's nothing you can do on an airplane besides sort of sit there and they would just, you know, book that ticket, get their laptop, they had the project that they needed to do and they would just work on it the whole way there and the whole way back.
And of course you're going to the bathroom and you're getting your snacks and you're getting your meals, but that's it. That is a work sprint. So this is something that people do. This isn't so like [00:20:00] crazy wild Katy strategy. This is an actual thing that people do when they have something that's meaningful that they wanna make massive progress on.
Okay. Just, I had been reminded of that story as I was talking anyways.
Now I wanna move on to some common mistakes that people make when utilizing a work sprint strategy, including some of the mistakes that I have made, um, and I have learned from.
Mistake number one is choosing the wrong project. So, as I keep saying throughout this episode, a work sprint is not something that we do all the time.
It's more of a [00:20:30] special occasion, if you will, strategy, and you're gonna have much more success if you use this strategy on the right project. So, i've already listed some examples of the kinds of projects that pair well with this kind of intense work session. But let's take a look at what might happen if you chose the wrong project or the wrong kind of project.
So let's say for example, that you have a big presentation at work to make progress on. Cool. Alright,, sounds good so far. But then let's say that it's collaborative in nature. So part of the project is your responsibility and [00:21:00] you've got a colleague who's responsible to, you know, for another part of it.
And maybe you can do your part during your work sprint, but if it's the kind of project where there's this sort of back and forth thing and you do a little and she does a little and he whatever, and so forth, and that's not the kind of work that's suited for a work sprint. Why? Well, because you're gonna reach a point like a bottleneck every time you know where you, you've done your work and you need your colleague to step in, right? And that's not like the work sprint. You don't want any bottlenecks.
another kind of [00:21:30] work that's not suited for a work sprint is studying.
on a neurological level, studying requires periods of learning followed by the passage of time in order for our brains to nearly forget what we've learned, to release that material from our working memory to be followed by another study session where we're active, recalling or retrieving the information that we studied earlier.
That's called Active Recall, which I took all about in episode 20. Now, despite how inconvenient this truth is, it is the very core of knowledge acquisition. So sitting down to a bunch of material and [00:22:00] demanding that your brain learn it over a period of a half a day just does not align with how our brains work, like it or not.
Now, there are some ways that you can kind of hack this a little bit. I actually teach this Inside School Habits University, but it's not something that's really possible unless you really know what you're doing.
Now, another kind of work that's not very conducive to sprints is any kind of work where you need feedback on in real time. Now, the nature of a work sprint is that you're doing it [00:22:30] solo. Okay? And so you wanna avoid using it for anything where you're like at the mercy of other people's timing. And then another common mistake I see people make with the strategy is going into it with the wrong mindset.
And if you go into this. Strategy with the idea that it's gonna be awful, that you're gonna be miserable, that I'd rather be doing anything else than you're gonna have a, you know, pretty unproductive work session. No one's making you do this. And believe it or not, there is a way to romanticize these experiences.
I.
I remember in college my [00:23:00] library had a cafe on the main floor and I would treat myself to a Roy Bo Rui, bo Rui, BOS, Rooibos whatever tea and an oatmeal raisin cookie. During my sprints, I wouldn't have oatmeal raisin cookies or Rui both. I dunno if I'm saying that right. Whatever tea any other time, and I began to associate those little treats with my work sprints.
To this day, I can't even smell ro Bo's tea without thinking of the library. But if you reframe these work sprints as something that you get to do, not something that you have to do, it can really [00:23:30] change your entire experience.
And when you're enjoying your time, you're more productive, you're more focused, and you produce better work. I know that mindset is hard, but it really is at the core of reaching our goals. So if you're listening to this podcast episode thinking, Ugh, like this, just sounds awful. Like, why would I ever do that?
Right? Well then your work is gonna be finding a way to reframe how you're thinking about it. Another common mistake I see people make is not celebrating the work on the other side of the sprint. I've been guilty of [00:24:00] this. Sitting down and blocking out distractions for a half a day or several days at a time is not easy.
But when done correctly with the proper planning, you can make massive progress on something that's important to you. And this deserves to be celebrated. And if you don't come up on the other side of a work sprint and reflect on all that you have accomplished, and maybe treat yourself by going to bed a little extra early the next day, or going for an extra long walk the next day.
If that's what you need, then you run the risk of making the [00:24:30] experience feel heavier than it needs to. But on the other hand, if you celebrate what you've achieved. You'll be more likely to have a positive memory of the experience, which means that you're gonna be more likely to use this strategy again in the future.
We all celebrate in different ways. My favorite way would be to take a hot power yoga class, or maybe have another hard workout to cents the theme here. Maybe go on a really long walk with my neighbor, but that looks different for everybody. All right. The last common mistake I [00:25:00] used to make, and I don't want you to make it, is to use this strategy more than necessary.
I told you earlier that I used this method in college to work on my thesis, but that is after I learned the hard way. I am a library gal and I used to love locking myself away in college, just the college library just to crank out work. It made me happy, but that got really old really fast, and I soon found myself dreading going to this beautiful place that I loved and used to find inspiring.
So I learned to use other productivity strategies, and I learned to really [00:25:30] hone my focus to work on my other kinds of assignments without turning it into some epic whole weekend event. So by the time my senior year rolled around, I had recovered, so to speak, and was able to more appropriately use this strategy just for my thesis writing.
So if you're listening to this conversation and maybe it's inspiring you to think about all the scenarios in which you might be able to try it out, I wanna remind you to be cautious about overusing it. Be mindful about choosing the right project [00:26:00] reserved and how frequently you use it. And if you do all that, you're gonna increase the chances of this becoming a tool that you actually enjoy.
Believe it or not. All right, my friends, we covered a lot, but before I end the show with a little wrap up, I wanna ask you a favor. It would mean the absolute world to me if you could share this show with someone that you think might get something from it or perhaps leave a review if you are listening on Apple sharing and reviews are the number one way that my show grows.
I would. Love that. [00:26:30] Thank you. All right. Let's do a quick recap of what we covered today. We started by defining what a work sprint is. It is an intense focus period of work dedicated to a single project and how it's different from your day-to-day workflow. I. I shared a few real life examples of when I've used this strategy effectively, like during a college thesis, launching School Habits University, and last weekend's little project sprint.
We talked about how to set up a successful sprint from picking a day and a project to planning your meals and your materials. I walked [00:27:00] you through how to protect your sprint from distractions and keep the commitment you made to yourself. Then we covered some common mistakes to avoid, like picking the wrong type of task, approaching the sprint with a negative mindset.
Please don't underestimate that one. Forgetting to celebrate your progress or using this strategy too often and just crashing and burning. Done right, A work sprint can be a powerful way to make big progress and actually feel good doing it. Alright, my friends, that takes [00:27:30] us to the end of the show. And as a reminder, you can find all of the links I mentioned and a transcript of this whole episode at learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/80.
I appreciate you. Thank you for listening, and remember, never stop learning.
