We want to follow the optimal path of the day, not the one using yesterday’s information
One reason why plans, I notice for myself, don’t survive, is when there are multiple people waiting on me and also if I have multiple opportunities I have noticed. And also all of this competes with all of the things I have theoretically planned to do in a given day or week or sprint.
Add to this of course, every task is a singularity.
Black hole Not onion
Realizing the onion analogy fails. People say, tasks with unknowns are like onions. You peel the first layer, but there are more and more layers. But that doesn’t work because an onion still has a known size which doesn’t change.
A black hole on the other hand, is not as heavy as it seems from the outside. At least, in the sense, its diameter is much smaller than its original star precursor.
However it also sucks you in and you cant leave for several hundred billion years until it evaporates! So maybe we need to keep shopping for analogies 😆.
what ends up happening
My colleague was recently telling me about this software, called Rally, where, overhead is also accounted for. So you acknowledge 20% of your time can end up going to coordination and planning/refining, logistics, etc.
So the hard part is, I suppose choosing: do you disappoint people who asked you for help, do you miss opportunities to make an impact that you did not anticipate, or do you ignore what you intended to do before all the new information arrived?
What ends up happening if you don’t decide is, the universe decides.
The Pain of Opportunity Cost
Collaboration opportunities, where you want to help someone, might start out being obvious only to you. A heavy reward potential sits in your head. You know you can help. You visualized it instantaneously. Now you see the execution will take time and you see this will cause you to not do what you intended to do before the opportunity arose! This is a heavy burden, especially if the payout looks great 🤩.
Procrastination and Boundaries
There is this Oliver Burkeman’ism, in his Time Management For Mortals1, of “clearing the decks”, which per my memory he means, say, “ok I’ll start working on my intention, I just have to check my email” or the more modern version, “I should see if there is something urgent on slack”. In this simplest form, this looks like the escapist form of procrastination and less the creative procrastination that strikes Tim Urban’s2 monkey mind. (Shiny syndrome?).
I think Burkeman’s insights run deep and I don’t remember them all but his point I believe was in the book title! We escape, often, because we fear death! If we postpone the plan we made, then maybe this is cheating time itself.
But another point of view, coming from Newel of Knowledge, is that many of us are bad at setting boundaries3. This hooks into burnout heavy! In fact a colleague recently pointed me to a page from Atul Gawande’s Checklist Manifesto about selflessness. He indicated that my often putting others’ needs before my own is a kind of virtue. I am definitely flattered here, and although I do get a lot of satisfaction from helping out my colleagues, I suspect I owe my behavior more to a lack of strong boundary-setting skills and less to my values.
Intake Overwhelm
Some parts of the day can be very bursty and decision fatigue bends you to just solve new problems immediately rather than defer them more naturally. And delegating could also be an option, but you may wish to avoid breaking your colleagues’ focus. Though often, five minutes turns into fifteen and fifteen into thirty. And now context switching back to your previous work is a new burden.
The buzz factor and Shiny syndrome
Explain also, the paradox that creating a to-do list item deflates your interest in it. Like my former colleague used to always say, “well we had a meeting about it, so it feels like we solved the problem, and now no one cares”. Part of my super-power I believe, is recognizing the flame of an opportunity at your fingertips. I understand that a lot of people lose this spark, but I say you should fan the flame.
Maybe a better way
Saying no is hard, so instead you might say, “not right now but maybe”. After all were all dealing with the same pressures.
Perhaps yes there are many options that arrived but usually they are known at least by midday, and opportunities perhaps have bigger windows than you think.
Also, most opportunities have a discounted payout–a benefit shortfall. And anyway you can’t exploit them if you keep exploring others.
So maybe you simply choose and write down your choices as the time block planner style and then just roll with it and stop listening for new opportunities or new requests for help.
Heads down and execute. And yea, maybe then if you have a settled approximation, you can better set expectations for those who sought out your help.
You will disappoint people, thats crushing but inevitable. Opportunities will be lost. But maybe collapsing the day’s wave functions, at least visually, in your minds eye or on paper, can help you execute more peacefully calmly!
Defer with deferrence
As David Allen originally pointed out, you need a system you can trust to defer or postpone, especially if someone else is counting on that thing. But I think we can agree that David Allen’s context did nor include Slack and he did not work in a triage war room.
But sometimes a low tech whiteboard or paper can still be helpful. Even in HBO’s The Pitt4, in all the chaos of their triage, they use a central “board” for status. As long as it is out of your head , in a place you trust, you are not distracted by it.
The deference part: maybe you can still respectfully ask someone to remind you again next time. This puts the ball back in their court and keeps you focusing on what you originally intended.
“Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.”
Another thing I borrow from show, The Pitt4, is this quote. This was a referenced during each of the last two seasons, I believe, during some of the busiest hours of the Jack Baueresque show. Per my memory the quote was introduced by Dr Jack Abbott, who is a war veteran and reading online, this quote does appear on military articles.
To me, this is significant because no matter how fast everything around you is happening, if you don’t approach it calmly, you will make mistakes. And carefully executed actions, played in sequence, should take less time than having to correct those errors.
References
- https://www.oliverburkeman.com/fourthousandweeks
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU , Tim Urban , " Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator | Tim Urban | TED"
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN8lxhAkIuA, Newel of Knowledge on boundaries
- HBO’s The Pitt