How to work smarter next year and kill ‘circling back’

Almost three-quarters of Australian workers will end the year with unfinished tasks – with many never resuming those projects in 2025 as they veer into the much maligned “circle back” territory, new research has found.

As Australia battles flatlining productivity, software titan Atlassian found almost one-third of projects will never be completed – even after workers return from Christmas holidays.

The findings were based on a survey of about 6000 workers across Australia, the US, France, Germany, India and the UK.

More than half the respondents cited “unexpected challenges” or “shifting priorities” for why work was never finished, with 71 per cent either having all tasks wrapped or pushed into the new year.

Atlassian has said workers are “drowning” and a separate study revealed Australia was “falling behind” in the artificial intelligence boom, with about half the nation’s workers believing the much-hyped technology was useless or at best an “occasional tool” in the workplace.

Molly Sands, head of Atlassian’s Teamwork Lab, said that during December many projects were “punted” into the next year and many were unlikely to resume. This leads to the dreaded “circling back”, a buzzword that has become as harmful as it is annoying, given workers often use the phrase to kick a can down the road, despite never intending to pick it up.

“There is so much of that circle back. There’s a whole internet culture of jokes around circling back,” Ms Sands said.

“So we came up with this idea to start studying when is the circle back moment? When do things really stop progressing, and why does that happen?

“Seven of 10 knowledge workers are having unfinished projects at the end of the year and that can lead to a ton of circling back in January, February, whenever you’re picking work projects back up again.”

Holiday hangover is attributed as a big reason for why some projects wither on the vine. The study found about 31 per cent of workers felt confident they could resume postponed projects quickly in the New Year.

But Ms Sands said good management could remedy the situation – even in remote working situations, which Atlassian co-founder and chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes said works so long as people don’t hire “a bunch of idiots”.

“People are concerned that they’re not going to be ready to just jump right back in,” she said.

“They’re not going to remember (the project details) however many weeks from now, they’re coming back after holidays and taking a break to refresh and reset.

“You need to set up things for the projects that should continue. So you know how to jump right back in.”

For Ms Sands, this includes videoing a “pep talk” to herself before taking leave. Atlassian bought video messaging platform Loom for $1.5bn late last year.

“The video version of me will still be very focused on all the details,” she said. I’ll know all the context. I’ll know the people. I’ll know what I’m worried about.

“So I’m going to give myself a little note that when I return from my break here, I can watch and see here’s the work (I) left off.”

But ensuring work gets done doesn’t mean staff and managers need to whip out their phones and start videoing themselves. While they can also use software such as Atlassian’s Jira to keep projects on track, creating “rituals” in the workplace and communication can ensure tasks get done.

“Within my team – which is largely behavioural scientists and learning designers and change management experts and folks in a lot of different types of roles – we use Jira for all of our planning,” Ms Sands said.

“And then every other week, we have a session for an hour where we go through, and we talk about the work, and we talk about what’s being de-prioritised and what’s being pulled forward.

“And there are a lot of ways to do that kind of process, but I think having regular rituals where you do double-click a little bit into what’s happening really helps managers avoid those nasty surprises of something falling off … and never hearing about it again.

“That’s one of the ways I’ve found is really helpful as a leader to have good visibility into what’s happening across my team.”

This article first appeared in The Australian.