Instinct vs. plan

    Why do some people fail even after working very hard? I believe they follow their instinct than follow a plan or reason. Unplanned tasks take substantially longer to accomplish than the planned tasks. You are among the overworked lot if you have worked on a couple of ad-hoc/on-the-fly jobs in a day, and the stress from it can affect several days to come. You will work at a sustained pace and still accomplish more if you are working on planned tasks.

Unplanned tasks can throw your day off gear. You will be in firefighter mode in the house on fire parlance; the house is on fire, and you are trying very hard to put off the fire. You end up suffering some damage even if you can put off the fire. The fire can kill the person trying to put off the fire. Unplanned tasks are the real cause of job stress and burnout.

Roughly ten years ago, a new revolution started sweeping across the software industry. A lot of product companies started implementing Agile methodology. The touted new idea is supposed to be a revolutionary change with incremental product delivery.

But there is a problem, increasing the number of tasks doesn't increase productivity. May project managers neglect planning and jump into the job. Lack of good planning will create a lot of ad-hoc activities. A JIRA ticket gets created for this ad-hoc activity though it is not a bonafide task.  The task must serve as a correct unit of work that takes at least one working day (8 hours) to several working days. Ideally, an engineer must process an average of one or lesser JIRA tickets per day but quite often spend half of the day processing JIRA tickets. Very often, people end up thinking that it is their measure of productivity. That is, the more JIRA tickets you process, the more you are working!

I recall an incident that happened a couple of years ago. We called a carpenter to our house. We needed just one thing; drill a nail in the wall. The nail drilling took less than five minutes, but the carpenter insisted on a full day wage for the work. He argued that he has to reserve an entire day, even if it takes only a few minutes. Finally, we relented and paid him the day's wage.

It works similarly in our industry as well. It costs more to do small chunks of work. Small chunks of work indicate a lack of foresight and good planning. They increase the overhead. Imagine generating a build each time after you check in a line of code.

I can recall a workplace example of an unplanned task that cost a brilliant engineer. He finished his work and left home when it is already late, and he is called back to the office once again to work on an urgent task. A few times like this back-and-forth made him leave for good. You realize that no great innovation is happening despite such inordinately stressful work, and the product remains a defect mine. Happy workplaces are productive and not stressful workplaces. Enjoy what you do to do it well. The same thing works for the family as well. Happy families thrive in every way.

Good planning makes work more enjoyable. Planned response to a problem goes a long way in comparison to the ad-hoc response. You will have to embrace the firefighter when you can't escape it. But realize that it is not sustainable, and embrace fire safety instead.

Document your plan

A plan/idea languishing in your mind is unrefined even if you have deliberated on it within yourself for a long time. Create a formal project report and try to uncover all possibilities. Consider that you want to build a house or you want to invest some money in stocks. Do a SWAT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis and document the complete analysis report. You may go wrong with your plan without the same.

There is a difference between thinking and writing. An average human being intertwingles his thinking with dreams and imaginations, and what he wants to do may fall short of reality. Comprehensive documentation will try to draw a logical conclusion and will seek to eliminate the bias.

Document your plans, ideas, and decisions to remove any impulsiveness from the same.

Title image source - the internet

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