A more process oriented Miles

Starting the chain, today

I read something in the paper the other day about process oriented vs results oriented thinking.

I guess I’ve tended to be a results oriented person. And that sucks. Because by ‘results oriented’ I don’t mean thatI actually get results — just that I spend most of my time orienting myself towards the results I would like instead of worrying about what kind of person I need to be if I’m going to get where I want to go. Sure, I have lots of plans but, outside of my day job at least, I spend far too little time improving the way I do things.

So starting today, that is going to change. Herein I describe the three areas that most need attention and how I’m going to commit to fixing them.

• Becoming a project finisher instead of a project starter.
• Being more outwardly focused.
• Increasing my collision hours.
• Writing code (or something visible externally) every single day.

Wait. That’s four things. Well never mind about that because here goes, I’m going to add one more.

• Not taking myself too seriously.

Finishing something for once

Bob Nystrom wrote an awesome blog post about his process completing his book which is definitely an inspiration for my plan right here. It’s so good I just read it out to my wife.

Just like Bob I’m also “a world class project starter”. I’ve got many hard drives, folio books and long email threads filled with my dreams and ideas. These different projects are in a variety of states of completion — from an idea scribbled on one page all the way up to fully fledged startups with collaborators, certificates of incorporation, lines of code and long, detailed email threads back and forth with my co founders. But, somehow almost none of these ideas seem ‘finished’. Hell, I even have a whole entire book that I wrote with a couple of other collaborators when I was younger but it sure as tootin’ ain’t published and let’s face it at this point it may never be published. [Astute reader’s will notice the determined but perhaps false optimism in the use of the word ‘may’ instead of ‘will’ before ‘never get published’. So sue me.]

Anyway, instead of my usual approach of just goddarn finish the damn thing (which would be a results oriented approach) I’m going to try instead to focus on being a better finisher. This even means putting aside a couple of unfinished projects for a few weeks just to get a feeling for what actually finishing something feels like. I’ve picked a nice simple project — my pocket money app idea — which I will finish to the point of publishing a workable app. Never mind commercialisation or collaborators or any of that jazz — this on is strictly for the family and the kids. We need a better way to keep track of this amorphous ‘pocket money’ word we throw around all the time as if it actually means something (and I think the kids are on to the fact that it’s not actually being tracked properly).

Outward focus

I’m also concerned about how much of my time and energy goes into stuff that never sees the light of day. For instance, the difference between a blog post and an email is that even if nothing comes of it at least those carefully crafted thoughts stick around as a bit of a public record of your thinking, that people might stumble across one day.

I spend an inordinate amount of time carefully crafting emails that only ever get read by one or two other people. Or sometimes I spend time outlining ideas on a whiteboard that nobody no-one will ever see. I mean it’s OK up to a point but I need to get a whole lot better at doing things that other people can see. Apart from opening up more opportunities for serendipity and random connections it’s also just a lot more efficient. Firstly it will force me to more focused on actual output and secondly, instead of writing an email to one person (or crafting a demo for one person) if instead I try to write as much as possible as a public letter (aka blog post) in the first place then the same text can be used for multiple people.

Increasing my collision hours

Another inspiration is this recent discussion about ‘collision hours’ thanks to a post from Bryce Roberts (with thanks to Alanna Krause for pointing me in that direction).

Living out here on the beautiful Kapiti coast, having successfully arranged for my work office to be a carefully calculated and lovely 3 minute stroll away, well it’s nice and all but it definitely has it’s downside. Phrasing this as a lack of ‘collision hours’ is just perfect. The other day I banged into an old designer friend at the supermarket in the city and we caught up on our respective projects. Not that anything came of it per se, but you never know, just the fact that we caught up may well count for something useful in the future. But at the moment that is a rare event — frankly my ‘collision hours’ are just appalling. I’ve been feeling this especially hard recently — since I stopped having a reason to be in Wellington City once a week I’ve felt more and more and cut off things.

Fixing this is a bit more of a longer term project but as they say acknowledging you have a problem is the first step. Also, there are a number of things I will be working on to see if I can’t improve the number of opportunities for collision hours. This may fit nicely with some of my other ambitions.

Writing something visible every single day

Another big inspiration for this post is Jerry Seinfeld famous trick of having a big calendar on the wall, writing every single day and not breaking the chain. John Resig also recently posted a wonderful bit about the success of his write code every single day strategy. Both of these people are total legends though, so it was nice to have the post by Bob Nyrstrom that I mentioned above to seal the deal. Not that he’s not also awesome but he at least seems human, and he has a family so it seems relevant to me.

So anyway here goes, my own personalized..
Set of rules for not breaking the chain

• Publish something visible every single day. This can be either a blog post, code to a github repository or an app update (at this point).
• Write an X on the calendar each day you succeed. Nothing if you don’t.
• These rules are subject to change but only with 24 hrs notice ahead of time.

I was going to add some bits and pieces about half an hour and finishing before midnight and stuff but I’ll consider that a guideline for now.

It’s no accident that this setup rules out writing a fantastic email or planning something on a whiteboard (unless the plans go public). It also rules out spending the entirety of my coding time setting up tools and frameworks (which is something I’ve been very well known to do).

However the bit about allowing my rules to change allows me to fix this type of thing. It’s just that any such changes need to be considered ahead of time (in the light of day) not justified afterwards (after a few beers for instance). Which leads nicely into..

Not taking myself too seriously

If they ever ask me that dreaded “What is your biggest failing?” question I might actually be tempted to reply with the cheesiest response ever — namely “I’m too much of a perfectionist”. Because you know what, it’s actually a real problem I have. Too often I over commit resources I don’t have on making something perfect with the result that the project never gets done or takes way too long. Sure it can sometimes be awesome when it is done but ‘good enough in the time we have’ is often the more optimal approach. Shorter too.

And if you combine this with a tendency to procrastinate (perhaps my real greatest failing) things can get really nasty.

For instance after discussing all the above with my wonderful wife earlier tonight she said “OK then off you go, start tonight. Go write your blog post for half an hour.”. I was genuinely suprised. I certainly wasn’t actually planning to actually *start* this plan tonight I mean I have to get a new wall planner calendar with ‘whole year on one page’ per Jerry Seinfeld for one thing. So I was ‘going to do this’ soon once I had perfected the rules. But to hell with that, here I am with a blog post that’s too long and rules that might need to be changed. But I’m going to publish this post anyway.

And then I’m gonna put a big red X on the calendar.