89. The 4-Stage Funnel for Finishing Work On Time: The System for Students and Professionals

productivityADHD/Executive Functionstask management
Written By Katie Azevedo

Episode 89

Getting work done and completed on time isn’t just about motivation or working harder. (It rarely ever is.) Instead, it’s about whether your tasks move smoothly through a hidden but super-powerful funnel.

In this episode, I break down the 4 stages of the Assignment Funnel for students and the Project Funnel for professionals, showing how both systems explain why some people finish calmly and others get stuck in a cycle of procrastination and panic.

If you’ve ever missed deadlines, felt overwhelmed by projects, or wondered why your to-do list never seems to shrink, this episode will give you a clear framework to spot the bottlenecks and finally get things done. On time. Without all the drama. Like it’s your job. Because it is.

What You Learn:

  • The 4 stages of the Assignment/Project Funnel and how they apply to schoolwork and professional tasks

  • Why work piles up when the funnel gets “clogged” — and how to spot where you’re getting stuck

  • How to use intake, sorting, processing, and output to move any assignment or project from start to finish

  • Common bottlenecks like procrastination, anxiety, ADHD, and perfectionism — and strategies for working through them

  • Why finishing on time isn’t just about time management, but about managing the flow of information and tasks

🔗 Resources + Episodes Mentioned:

Never stop learning.

▶  ✏️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 😉

    The 4-stage Funnel for Finishing Work on Time: A System for Students and Professionals.

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    [00:00:00] Hey there and welcome back to the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. I'm Katie Veto, and today we're talking about a system that explains why some people always seem to get their work done on time with minimal stress, while others have a lot more trouble finishing on time or even at all.


    I call it the assignment funnel. Now, I wrote a blog post about this on schoolhabits.com not that long ago, and according to the analytics on my website, it was a popular one, so I figured it would make a great podcast episode because it is relevant for [00:00:30] students and professionals. So let me explain why this funnel thing matters.


    If you are a student, this funnel applies to every paper, test, project on your plate. Every single assignment you're given has to go through an assignment funnel in one way or another. And if it doesn't, then the work ends up late or not done at all. And if you're a professional, I'll show you how the exact same funnel explains why your work projects either [00:01:00] move smoothly to the finish line or get stuck somewhere along the way.


    Every single work project or task that you have on your plate has to go through this funnel in one way or another, because if it doesn't, then your work ends up late. Or not done at all. Now, it's not likely that you have heard the term assignment funnel before because honestly I made it up. But I'm pulling the concept from something that maybe you have heard before and [00:01:30] that is a project funnel.


    Now I'm gonna talk about both of these today, but first, let's go over the setup of this episode so you know where we're going.


    So first I'm gonna explain the assignment funnel in the context of a student in school, completing papers and tasks and projects and just regular old homework assignments. And then I'm gonna explain this funnel for working professionals and how it impacts your task initiation and task completion.


    Now, while this is the same funnel for both students and [00:02:00] professionals, I think it can be helpful for professionals to think this as a project funnel rather than an assignment funnel, just so that you don't blow it off as something that doesn't pertain to you just because it has the word assignment in it.


    You know what I mean? I mean, I probably could have called this whole thing a task funnel, but here we are. It's assignment funnel drawn from the concept of a project funnel.


    Now, if you are a working professional and you are tempted to skip to the part of this episode where I talk about the project funnel in the [00:02:30] context of work, and you're thinking, well, I don't need to understand the assignment funnel because I am not a student, I strongly encourage you to listen to the student part because I explain the four stages of the student funnel which are the same four stages of the project funnel. So it's just more explanation that you get about how this works because once you understand what the assignment or project funnel is and the four steps of it, you'll be able to look at your own workflow and your own work habits and figure out what part of your funnel [00:03:00] is broken or jammed. Okay, we have a lot to cover, so let's begin.


    [00:03:30] All right, so it makes sense to start by explaining what the heck this funnel is. Now, I want you to think of it like an actual kitchen funnel, right? It's wide at the top. It is narrow at the bottom, like an upside down cone. I want that image to be in your head, okay? Assigned work goes in the top, and ideally completed work comes out the bottom.


    If there is a clog somewhere in the funnel, things pile up at the top, and that's when we see [00:04:00] huge to-do lists, late work, missed assignments, increased stress. The feeling like work is too hard, and the feeling like there's just not enough time in the day to get everything done. We all know that feeling, myself included.


    So picture this. I'm gonna explain this in the context of a student first, okay? But if you're a professional, don't skip this part because it gives some insights in this, part of the episode that will help you better understand how it applies to a working context, too. Okay? Picture this. On Monday, a [00:04:30] teacher assigns a research paper and it's due in three weeks.


    Okay, that's the baseline. Student a hears paper due in three weeks and doesn't think about it for two weeks and six days, and ends up panic writing it at 1159 the night before, like one minute before it's due. And student B, hears the exact same deadline, the exact same assignment, and hands it in a day early, calmly, [00:05:00] no drama or emotion. It's just done.


    Now, let's say that both students are equally smart. They are equally busy, totally even playing field in both of those areas. Okay? So what could be going on? Why is one person able to see the task through from beginning to end without any drama and the other one barely makes it to the finish line alive?


    The difference is in their assignment funnel. Student [00:05:30] A has some kind of blockage or kink somewhere in their funnel, and on the other hand, student B has a smooth assignment funnel from top to bottom. So work goes in and work comes out without any problems.


    All right, so it's time to dig into what the heck is this assignment funnel or for professionals, which I'll cover in a moment in the second part of this episode, the project funnel.


    So there are four stages in the funnel, okay? In both of the assignments funnel and the project funnel, at [00:06:00] least the way that I teach it for simplicity's sake, there are four stages. And if you get stuck in even just one of the stages, the entire system breaks down and either nothing comes out the bottom or everything all sort of bubbles up the top.


    Can you kind of picture that if you're pic picturing like a kitchen funnel? So let's go through the four stages of the assignment funnel.


    Now, stage one is intake, right? This is the very top of the funnel. It's the widest part of the [00:06:30] funnel. Intake is how you capture assignments the moment you get them.


    It's students who rely on their memory or their school's learning management system like Canvas or Google Classroom or whatever you have usually have a bottleneck here because our brain is not built to hold dozens of tasks in our working memory. You need a task management system. Paper, digital. I don't care which, but you need one.


    If you have no intake system, there is no funnel. If you need help understanding task management systems, [00:07:00] listen to episode five. I will link that in the show notes. And of course, inside SchoolHabits University, there's an entire module on task management. Okay? But when you are a student, you can intake assignments from a variety of sources. Of course, it might be the things inside your learning management system that are posted inside there, but it might be stuff that your professors tell you in class.


    It might be a task that you're given during one of the, you know, clubs that you belong to. It might be something that you were asked to do via email. [00:07:30] It might be an assignment that you are giving yourself like a study session before a test, because that's not something that's posted to your learning management system, but it's something that you still need to do, right?


    It's all the stuff that you are responsible for completing, whether it comes from an outside source like a professor, or maybe your boss for a part-time job, or just something that you yourself are choosing to do. Okay? That is stage one intake.


    Stage two is sorting. So once your [00:08:00] assignments are captured in the intake stage and you've written them down in your task management system, you have to decide their order.


    We can't do every single task at the exact same time. So what you have to do is prioritize by what's urgent, by what's important, and how long each will take. This is called prioritization. Okay. Prioritization can be really hard, especially if you have ADHD because this process involves multiple executive functions, and if you have ADHD, that can be a challenge.


    Students with [00:08:30] anxiety also often get stuck here because anxiety interferes with our executive functions, which makes everything feel urgent at once, right? And then we catastrophize, and then we become paralyzed from there. But without sorting your assignments, we end up starting random tasks, maybe avoiding them altogether and getting so overwhelmed at where to start that you know, we don't, or we wait until 1159.


    I have a few resources to help develop your skill of prioritization. The first is a podcast episode that is number 49. [00:09:00] It's called How to Make Decisions Faster and More Confidently. I teach some decision making frameworks in that episode, which involves prioritization.


    So that is a good place to start. Another great super relevant resource here is a blog post that I have on schoolhabits.com. It's literally called how to prioritize your homework assignments. And then a final resource to share with you is my number one top performing podcast episode of all time, episode number four, what To Do When [00:09:30] You're Overwhelmed.


    That's an episode in which I'm talking about being overwhelmed, you know, with your work in general. But then I share strategies for how to take the first step to move forward. So start with that episode if you've already reached the state of analysis paralysis. I'll leave all those links in the show notes and at learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/89 'cause this is episode 89 already, which is bananas.


    If you're watching this on YouTube, the links will be in the description box below. Okay, so, so far we have [00:10:00] stage one, which is intake. Stage two, which is sorting. Stage three, which is processing. That is where we're at now. Processing means breaking big assignments into smaller doable steps. Processing also means breaking up and planning out your study sessions over the course of a week or several weeks using spaced repetition.


    So for a moment, let's return to that fictional research paper that was, you know, fictionally assigned at the top of this episode. Do you remember? Student A froze [00:10:30] for basically three weeks and then wrote a low quality panic paper and turned it in a minute before it was due, and then student B was able to hand it in calmly and smoothly and complete it with no drama.


    Right? So if we look at this example and run it through the stage of the funnel that we're on now, which is processing, that would involve thinking about all of the micro steps involved with that research paper and planning when you're gonna do each one. So student a just saw "write research paper" as one [00:11:00] task and put it off way too late to realize though, that there was actually multiple steps involved in writing that research paper steps that he or she should have completed over multiple days.


    But student B masterfully understood the assignment funnel because they listened to this podcast, obviously, and knew that research paper was a huge project that had to be processed properly and broken down into multiple steps. So instead of "write research paper", you know, [00:11:30] on a Thursday or whatever, it becomes do research on one day, gather sources on another day, create outline on a third day, draft the paper on a fourth day, and then the fifth day, maybe edit. So that is five separate steps. And honestly, some of those could be broken down further. Like draft paper or dri, you know, write the outline or, yeah, write the first draft is probably not gonna happen in one sitting, so that could be broken down even further.


    But it is this processing that allows you to complete assignments at a reasonable pace over a reasonable [00:12:00] amount of time without losing your mind, and of course you would use my weekly planning strategies that I teach you in episode 21. Those are my best weekly planning tips for planning out your ideal week, and you would use those strategies to map out on which days and specifically what time you're gonna work on each of those micro steps.


    That's how we move an incomplete assignment through the assignment funnel without getting stuck somewhere along the way. And it is students who skip this stage, like student A, [00:12:30] who end up trying to do it all in one sitting, which usually ends up in frustration, burnout, and obviously, you know, ultimately poor grades over time.


    Okay, finally, we are at stage four: output. This is the actual doing. It is sitting down, it is writing, it is finishing, and it is submitting. This is the action we take to do the thing that we're trying to move through the funnel. Now, sometimes people move smoothly through [00:13:00] intake, so they're writing it all down. Okay. And then sorting. They prioritize what needs to be done first, and then they move through processing.


    They've broken their larger tasks down and they put them on their weekly calendar to be completed, but then they stall in the output stage because of procrastination. Uh, maybe perfectionism, but if there's no output, there's no result. And then the funnel overflows. So you can see that the simple act of being assigned homework or a project for school actually involves way more than just sitting down and doing the assignment, because [00:13:30] if it were that simple, everybody would just sit down and do their assignments.


    And as much as I am the biggest advocate for the Nike slogan, just do it, like that is I think that's written on my bones. We also have to face the reality that there are three steps that come before just doing it. Okay, so that was the assignment funnel in the context of academics. All right, now we are going to move into a version of this assignment funnel for working professionals.


    Now, if you are not in school, you have the same funnel. It just [00:14:00] looks different a little bit. Okay? Same four stages, but there's a couple things that are different. Let's call it the project funnel. Now the term project funnel is used in the workplace to refer to this idea of like the workflow of completing something.


    But the classic project management funnel is a little more complex than the one that I'm explaining to you here. If you Google project management funnel, you'll see that there's a lot of different varieties. Some of them have... Most of them actually have [00:14:30] 5, 6, 7 steps. I've seen project management funnels with 10 steps.


    Okay? These steps can all have different names, but for the sake of what I'm teaching here today, I'm sticking to the four stages. That is sufficient for the majority of our work tasks and projects.


    Now, if you are looking for a more complex project management funnel because you're actually a project manager, like that is your job title, then you can break your funnel down into more steps than the ones I talk about here.


    [00:15:00] Totally fine. So for example, some complex project management funnels involve, you know, a step that's awareness and ideating and brainstorming, and then the final step, So at the end there's additional steps that involve like evaluating and monitoring the project and maybe assessing conversions, whatever.


    But that is not the approach I take on this podcast. The approach I take here is simple is best. So that means if that if you're a working professional, the same four stages apply to your project funnel: intake, [00:15:30] Sorting, processing and output. Right? I'm gonna walk through all of these four stages, providing some workplace context the same way I, I just did with the student context.


    Okay? So stage one intake. In the workplace intake is capturing tasks from meetings or slack or email. You may have recurring tasks that are part of your job, like maybe weekly or monthly reports. All right. It may also be something that you're not technically [00:16:00] assigned, but you're gonna deliver a presentation at a meeting, so you need to create the presentation and do all the research involved. So each of those needs to be captured somehow. I already said meetings, but you know, if you're sitting in a meeting and someone asks you to follow up on something or to take the initiative on something or remind them of something, those tasks need to be captured in some way.


    If you don't have a task management system as a working professional, your project funnel is broken at stage one. We are not relying on our memories here. [00:16:30] Everyone listening to this podcast is over that, right? Sorry, I love you, but come on.


    Also, if your inbox is a common source of tasks, like, let's say that you're assigned a lot of work via email and that's, you know, one of your, your input sources, then it's absolutely essential to have an email management strategy that works, so you're efficiently able to extract tasks from your email and put them in your task management system without those tasks getting lost or ignored.


    I have two powerful [00:17:00] email management podcast episodes. Episode 15, which is called email management, three best practices for handling your inbox, and then episode 62 is called Managing Email Inbox Chaos and Email paralysis. Those will both be linked in the show notes, and even if you think that your email management system is moderately functional, I suggest putting those episodes in your listening queue because you just might get a tip or two to optimize what you're already [00:17:30] doing.


    And optimization is like the way we move forward, right?


    Okay, so that was stage one. Stage two is sorting. Professionals often get hung up here because everything feels like a priority. When the boss is like, I need this asap, and the client is like, everything's on fire. But without sorting, you spend the day firefighting instead of progressing on meaningful work.


    Earlier in this episode, when I was talking about this stage in the assignment funnel for students, I shared some resources to help with this [00:18:00] step. So if by any chance you fast forwarded through that section because you're not a student, I advise you to go back and listen to those resources I share in that part of the episode.


    Of course, they will be linked below as well, but just as I shared back earlier in the episode, sorting can be a challenge for people with A DHD, with executive function deficits or anxiety.


    So if you identify with one of those and you often fall behind your work, it just may be that this is the stage of your project funnel that needs some love and attention. [00:18:30] All right, moving on to stage three. Processing.


    So we have captured our projects in the intake phase.


    We have prioritized them in the sorting phase. So now we know what we're gonna work on first, and now it is time to take each of those tasks and break them down into smaller milestones and determine when we're going to work on each step. For example, a presentation is not one task, right? It's research.

    It's slide design, it's drafting notes. It's rehearsing and practicing. [00:19:00] And if you only write do a presentation on your to-do list, you won't consider it worth working on until the day before, like it won't even be on your radar until the day before, and that is certainly not the best approach to calm productivity.

    So instead, you would break down that project and perhaps use a strategy like time blocking, which I teach in episode 77, to assign yourself specific days and times to work on each of these micro tasks. In fact, this is the exact thing [00:19:30] that time blocking works like gangbusters on. Alright.

    Let's say that you have a monthly report to complete and submit, like that's a recurring task of yours due at the end of every month. Well then processing that task might mean that you can break up that report into several days, working on smaller sections at a time, reducing the overwhelm and dread you feel around that project every single month.


    Alright, and then finally, stage four is output. This is completing and [00:20:00] delivering the final report, presentation product.

    This is the sitting down and doing it part. This is the bum and chair fingers on the keyboard part. This is the block out all distractions and just do it part. Now, just as I explained earlier with the student assignment funnel, you may have a smooth workflow through stage one, two, and three.

    You may have a perfect task management system. You might have excellent prioritization skills, right? And you may [00:20:30] have mastered the art of breaking down big projects using time blocking and weekly planning to map them out. But if you don't have focus skills or discipline, then stage four never happens.


    Your funnel gets clogged and nothing comes out.


    And I may ruffle some feathers here by saying that this requires discipline, because sometimes people have like a lot of feelings around this concept of discipline, like, but that's the reality, right? At the end of the day, this step requires discipline. Motivation is not a guest at this party. [00:21:00] Remember, motivation is simply an emotional state, which means it comes and goes just like anger and joy and whatever emotions we have.


    Many of the working professionals I coach are successful when we set up our task management system and our weekly planning routines. But when it comes to sitting down and doing the work, which they have to do, I can't do that for them. When we're like logged out, we're not on Zoom and we're not like during our session, they have to do the work outside of that one hour we're together.[00:21:30] 

    And sometimes that's where they get stuck. And as I said, it can be for a variety of reasons. If you have ADHD, then task initiation is a challenge, but that does not mean you are doomed. That means that you, more than anyone else, needs to take this project funnel seriously and examine where your breakdown is.

    It may be that you don't have a DHD, but you're just working in an environment that doesn't support focus. So when you sit down to work, you have 10,000 things competing for your attention. You [00:22:00] have to change that. We can't work in distracted places, and it's absurd to think we can. 

    Now, other common professional bottlenecks at this stage include, you know, just endlessly tweaking what we've created, over editing what we've written or delaying the handoff until everything's perfect, so perfectionism. But honestly, if you dial in your project funnel, or if you're a student, your assignment funnel, then sometimes the perfectionism goes away because you have [00:22:30] infused some intentionality in stages one, two, and three. So by the time you get to stage four and you're working on the thing, you have confidence in what you're producing.

    And if you dial in your project funnel or you know your assignment funnel, sometimes the procrastination goes away because you've broken the big project into discrete steps. So now you actually see that each little step isn't so bad, and you have clarity on what you have to do and when you're gonna do it.

    And know this: clarity [00:23:00] is the absolute enemy of procrastination, right? A clear funnel reduces stress, it keeps your calendar manageable and improves the quality of your work. It is not just this time management thing, it's more of information flow management. It's this cool intersection of like time management, task management, and information management.

    And it's that like where they intersect, that's where the funnel exists. And once you can run the funnel for schoolwork or for job projects, you can [00:23:30] apply it anywhere. Internships, side hustles, life admin, personal projects, literally anything.

    Finishing work on time without a lot of drama, it's not magic and it's not even about being disciplined a hundred percent all the time, right? It's about you do need discipline, but that's not what I'm talking about here. It's about whether your funnel is open and clear and operating.

    If things keep overflowing out the top, it's because one of the four stages [00:24:00] is blocked.


    So here's what I want you to do. Figure out your bottleneck. Maybe it's intake, maybe it's sorting, maybe it's processing, maybe it's output. Whatever it is, shine a light on it. That's where your focus belongs, because once you clear that one stage look out. 'cause everything starts to move. Like it's all gonna move fast. Work goes in, work comes out, and you can simply do your job without the drama. Whether your job is, you know, to study for your next test or to launch the [00:24:30] new product in your company. 

    Alright, I would love if you could share this episode with a student or a colleague in your life who could benefit from what we're talking about here.

    That would mean the world to me as I work to grow this podcast. And as always. Keep showing up. Keep doing the hard work, keep asking the hard questions, and never stop learning. 

Katie Azevedo
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88. Background Tasking: A Smarter Approach to Focus