Coaching practices for Ship the Work
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Ship the Work, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I hoard everything until it’s finished and perfect, so I work in total isolation and only ever show the polished result
- I have a graveyard of projects that are ninety percent done and will never see daylight
- I keep dragging the big-picture dreamers into the tedious finishing work and asking my finishers to brainstorm wild ideas, and everyone’s miserable and the handoffs are a mess
- The work I actually choose for myself
- My days vanish into recurring admin that anyone could do, and the work that only I can do never gets reached
Practices that may help
- Share the process, not just the result
Show the work in progress to attract collaborators, feedback, and serendipity.
Steal Like an Artist, in Practice - Treat completion as craft, not finish line
The final 20% of a project — finishing and releasing — is its own skill that must be practiced.
The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making - Assign project phases to genius-matched people
Route early ideation to Wonder/Invention geniuses and execution phases to Tenacity geniuses.
The 6 Types of Working Genius (Patrick Lencioni) - Carve out self-directed time
Reserve protected time to pursue work you choose, the way innovative teams do.
Drive: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose - Outsource personal and business tasks with a virtual assistant
Hand off any recurring task a written process can describe to a skilled assistant.
Lifestyle Design, Made Practical - Define your territory: where creative work belongs
Name the specific space, time, and conditions that constitute your creative work territory and defend them.
The War of Art, Made Practical - Drain the shallows
Aggressively limit and batch low-value shallow work so it doesn’t crowd out deep work.
Deep Work, Made Practical - Assign a theme to each day of the week
Decide in advance which type of work each weekday is for and protect those assignments.
Theme Days, Made Practical - Match the task to the person
Delegate based on the fit between the task’s demands and the person’s skill, growth needs, and capacity.
Effective Delegation, Made Practical - Substitute
Ask: what component, material, person, process, or rule could be swapped for something different?
SCAMPER: A Systematic Creativity Technique
Related concerns
- Delegate Work
Assign Q3 tasks to team members who are ready to stretch — and treat the learning curve as the point.
Use delegation as a development tool
- Creative Solitude
Schedule regular time alone, away from stimulation — this is not a luxury but the condition for original thought.
Protect solitude and silence as creative inputs
- Dedicated Space Creative Work
Name the specific space, time, and conditions that constitute your creative work territory and defend them.
Define your territory: where creative work belongs
- Four Hour Work Week Outsourcing
Hand off any recurring task a written process can describe to a skilled assistant.
Outsource personal and business tasks with a virtual assistant
- When Drive Daniel Pink Increase Autonomy
Reclaim control over how you do the work — Pink’s "four T’s".
Increase autonomy over task, time, technique, and team
- When Lifestyle Design Outsource Personal Tasks
Hand off any recurring task a written process can describe to a skilled assistant.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.