In the weeds

Being overwhelmed and finishing things

Once upon a time, I had to go through integration tests and clean them up. What I found especially interesting is how often tests are commented out, or, marked as pending. In most cases, a well-meaning comment is left, essentially, a broken promise of how the person who decided to forego this test will come back and fix it up.

Then years pass.

And they never come back. The tests rot. And they get passed down like folklore. At many start-ups, there is a tendency to start things, but not finish them. Now I’m never going to judge people for not finishing things. I don’t think there should be an intense, irrational pressure to finish things. There are good reasons for not finishing things. It could be, in the course of your attempting something, you found out how difficult it really is, and, you made the decision to not finish it because it just wasn’t worth it.

But as I’ve discovered working with many different people on many different projects, often case, the reason things aren’t finished is because people get overwhelmed. I’d like to borrow the restaurant term “in the weeds” to describe the situation when you’re so deep in a project, you can’t see the clear way back out. You’ve gotten so overwhelmed, you’ve lost sight of the bigger picture, you got distracted, you gave up.

Asking for help

The toughest thing can be coming up for air. When you find yourself overwhelmed, take a moment to pause and reflect. Pausing and reflecting is best done with friends. The biggest obstacle to this is getting over any sense of shame. We’re all adults, and we’ve all been here before. If your co-workers are so unsympathetic that they are intolerant of your needing help, you may want to re-examine who you want to work with.

Once you’ve decided to pause and reflect, with friends or without, you can ask yourself some simple questions to get yourself out of this predicament.

1. What problem am I trying to solve?
2. Am I trying to do too much at once?
3. If my project was suddenly wiped out, and I had to start over, would I?

If you’d have a hard time identifying the purpose of your work, this is a good time to boil it back down to basics. Perhaps your requirements seemed sensible at the time, but if the problem you’re working on could be punted, and you’d still accomplish your goal, this is the time to punt (but write it down for later review). If you’re drowning in complexity, this is a good time to simplify.

The last point is meant to check in with the sunk cost fallacy. If you wouldn’t start your project over again, you should just stop. Now. Let it go.

Of course, it takes some amount of reflection to recognize the feelings of being overwhelmed. And, this feeling can overtake any of us. It’s not a trap one gets over, it’s a pitfall that constantly haunts us. There is no magic bullet to recognizing this state, but I know feeling harried and rushed can push me into a place where I can’t see it. Slowly down helps me to recognize when I’ve gotten into the weeds.

When you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a step back. Consider the costs of what you’re doing. Take a break. If it’s worth it, you can probably find an easier way forward.