This Resource is More Valuable than Time

Most people agree that time is one of, and often THE, most valuable resource we have. For good reason - once time has passed, we can't get it back.

There is one thing that I never thought of as a resource until I heard someone else mention it as such: attention; and lately I've been thinking that attention is even more valuable than time. We all have the same amount of time in our days, but there are some people for whom we look at and wonder how they have time for all the things they are able to accomplish. There may be multiple contributing factors, but I would bet a large sum of money that they are very deliberate, focused, and militant about where they put their attention.

Time is valuable, but attention is where things get done.

Most people cite things like work, family, and hobbies (not necessarily in that order) as their priorities, and thus what gets their attention. And yet, those three things are already enough to fill out our days. If you manage to get someone's attention, you are dealing with their most precious currency. You owe it to them to make it worth their while.

That is why I keep my posts short and to the point. I know that you saw this post in a feed, and could have kept scrolling. My title was competing with dozens or hundreds of other posts for your attention. Yet, you decided to move your index finger slightly off to the side and click a button on this one. You took a chance on what I have to say, and I owe it to you to be respectful of your time.

Knowing that attention is a valuable resource has helped me think about ways that I've previously wasted it in the past, so I can avoid wasting it in the future. It's one thing to say that certain things are a waste of time, but if I can identify what gets my attention, I can work to address the issue of wasted time upstream.

For example, checking Facebook is a waste of time to me. I still do it on occasion, but there has never been a time when I checked and thought to myself 'That was time well spent.' So one might think that it's easy to just.. not check Facebook, right? For a while, I had the app installed on my phone, so I'd get notified by the blinking light that something 'needed' my.... (wait for it)... attention. But once the light was going, it was over - it already had my attention and was diverting it from more important things. The solution wasn't to resist that urge to check - it was to uninstall the app and remove the attention grabbing mechanism as a whole.

We live in an attention-grabbing society, and our consumer-focused economy is based on things vying for the limited amount of attention we have available. By being conscious of where we put our attention, we can be more focused on the things we care about and that matter to us.

What Do You Love Enough That You Are Willing To Fail At?

“Practice makes perfect”

“Failure is not the opposite of success – it is part of success”

Pick your favorite quote about success, and chances are there is some aspect of it that involves failure, overtly stated or not. I find these quotes to be helpful reminders that we can expect to fail as we grow, but knowing that intellectually, vs really embracing it, are sometimes two different things.

I heard a quote recently that completely changed how I think about failure in the context of learning a new skill:

Do you love doing it enough that you are willing to fail over and over again?

This was a bit of a revelation to me because, once I started thinking about it, the things I am good at today are things that I failed at, a lot, in my past. Yet, there was something I got from learning that skill that kept me motivated, even though I wasn’t always successful at it. Contrasting that with things I wanted to learn, but ultimately gave up on, and I realized I was drawn to the end goal of being proficient, but the process of gaining proficiency was not something I enjoyed enough.

I think this is especially true as an adult. It’s easy to forget how much time and effort was spent on gaining proficiency in the skills we currently have that provide us with a career and stable paycheck. Yet, when we go to learn something new and start running into difficulty, we make excuses by saying things like ‘oh, I was never good at foreign languages’ or ‘I was never that athletic anyway’.

Thinking about learning a new skill in the context of having to love it enough to be willing to fail over and over again does two big things that I think are important. First, it gives me the permission to give up if, in being honest with myself, I find that I was mostly drawn to the end result. Second, if I do take on learning something new, it helps me focus on determining what the rewarding aspect is that will help keep me motivated throughout the process of failing, until a rewarding level of proficiency is achieved, and a flywheel effect of satisfaction has had a chance to take hold.

"Slow is smooth, smooth is fast"

This is a quote from my triathlon coach.

A triathlon is comprised of three activities - traditionally swim, then bike, then a run. It is very easy to think solely of things like swim stroke, bicycle aerodynamics, and running form when it comes to putting together the pieces of a successful race, but one of the often-missed aspects (from the outsider point of view) is the transition between each discipline. In a race, these are aptly named T1 (Transition 1) and T2 (Transition 2).

To help paint a picture, let's take a moment to walk through what needs to happen during T1. After the swim, the competitor usually, at a minimum, must find their gear bag, take their wetsuit off, take their goggles off, get their bike socks on, get their bike shoes on, get their helmet on, and get their race belt on. Then, there are personal preferences - affixing their Garmin to the bike, putting on their HR monitor, putting on sunscreen, donning cycling sunglasses, etc. In shorter races, missing one thing may not be that bad, but in something like an Ironman where the competitor is about to start off on a 112 mile bike ride - if the glasses or some sort of eye protection is forgotten, eyes are directly exposed to 17-20 mph winds for anywhere from 5-6 hours. Not fun.

So, why am I mentioning all of this? Because it is a great example of a situation with a lot of moving parts, where taking a moment to be mindful of your actions often results in smoother, and ultimately faster, execution.

I find the quote above to be a very simple way to remember that when my mind gets going, moving 100 mph and trying to keep a lot of moving parts in order, that I need to slow down, take a breath, and take the necessary time to be deliberate about my actions. Too often we end up in situations where time is of the essence and we are under pressure to produce results now. I find these situations to be ripe with the possibility of getting ahead of myself, missing a step, having to go back and make a correction (at best), or even redo a lot of work (at worst). I've yet to find a scenario where being hasty and having to redo work is preferred to taking the appropriate amount of time and doing something right the first time.

The quote may have been said in reference to the specifics of a triathlon transition, but 'Slow is smooth, smooth is fast' is something I find application for just about every day, both at work, and at home.

By the way - while my transition times have never been stellar (some people do actually rigorously practice them), I never did forget my glasses, or get to the bike mount line in an Ironman and only then realize I didn't have bike shoes - both of which I've seen happen.

What is a Goal vs a Strategy vs a Tactic?

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

- Sun Tzu

The terms goal, strategy and tactics are often used interchangeably in casual conversation - but learning what each is, and where each fits into the picture alongside the other two, was a light bulb moment for me. I previously wrote about the importance of execution, and to me, knowing the precise definition of these three terms is critical to laying a successful foundation for execution.

At its simplest:

Goal – What it is that you want to achieve

Strategy – The methods of how you are going to get there

Tactics – The specific action items taken

Developing a Goal

A goal is a very simple, clear, and almost reductive statement. It is simply “I/we want X”, with no consideration of how X gets accomplished. Most people are familiar with the idea of creating a goal, but many times what people think is a goal is actually a strategy or a tactic. For example, someone making a New Year’s resolution may say “I want to lose weight, so I have a goal of going to the gym 3x per week”. In this example, the true goal is to lose weight – going to the gym 3x per week is a tactic.

Developing a Strategy

Strategies are still fairly simple, but they start involving the question(s) of 'how'. This is often where values, such as those of a mission statement, or critical desires identified by the parties involved, start to become considered.

Continuing the example of a New Years resolution, lets say a person decides that the options are to eat smaller portions (fewer calories in), cook at home more (less processed food), or start exercising (increase calories burned). Those are three strategies. Notice that in our losing weight example, the strategy was not directly mentioned – it was implied by the idea of going to the gym 3x per week.

Developing Tactics

The tactics are the action items where the ‘work’ gets done, the 'what do I need to do?' questions. Thus, going to the gym 3x per week is a tactic. Or, coming up with a menu of potential home cooked meals to prepare during the week is a tactic if one is following a strategy to cook at home more. The tactics can be fairly flexible – if the tactics are not effective in implementing the chosen strategy, they can be adjusted based on newly obtained information.

Putting it all together

The real power of identifying goals, valid strategies, and effective tactics is the flexibility afforded as conditions change, which may otherwise derail forward progress. Going back to our losing weight example – if someone says their goal is to go to the gym 3x per week, and then they are not able to go to the gym for some time (injury, busy work schedule) – it is easy to succumb to a failure mindset and give up. By recognizing that going to the gym 3x per week is just a tactic, which is part of one (but not the only potential) strategy – the overall goal is something that can still be worked toward.

Two Rules I Follow when Changing A Scheduled Item

Finding a common time among a group of people to create a schedule item, such as a meeting, can be challenging. Even more difficult is when an item on the calendar involving a lot of people needs to be rescheduled. I find this situation to be ripe with possibilities of miscommunications, frustrations, and some people not receiving the update.

I’ve taken to adopting two rules that I have found very helpful in combating this:

Rule #1 - You can change an appointment/meeting ONCE

People are busy. They have their own calendars that are full, and they are also likely plugged into multiple calendars – their personal calendar, their work calendar, their spouses’ calendar, their kids’ calendar(s), etc. Making a proposed change to their calendar involves more than just finding an open slot – it may involve moving other stuff around to accommodate, which can result in a trickle-down effect on other calendars they are involved in. If I try to follow-up a change with a subsequent change (especially if the subsequent change is to go back to the original plan), things get confusing very quickly, and it is easy for mistakes to be made.

In short, attention is a resource, people have a limited amount of it, and changing a calendar item is often resource intensive. If I am going to make a schedule change, I really try to ensure that it is absolutely necessary, because I’ve found that once a change is made, it’s best to consider it immutable.

Rule #2 - Get positive confirmation that the change was received. Don’t assume.

Once I’ve decided to make a change, I make it clear to people that I am expecting confirmation from them about said change.

If I make a change in a schedule item without requesting confirmation, I don’t know whether they are OK with the change and just stayed silent, or whether they missed the request, or they are looking into whether they can accommodate and it’s just taking time on their end, or any number of complications that may have arisen. Requesting confirmation dramatically reduces the chance of a miscommunication – even if the response is ‘I may be able to accommodate, but give me a few days to verify other parts of my schedule’. At least the other person and I are on the same page.

Regarding assumptions - the only place I find they can be made is when a change is being proposed, and it’s done so with the statement “I’m going to assume that unless I hear from you, we are sticking with the original plan”.

The other reason to request confirmation is that if someone sees an updated calendar item, they check their schedule and are OK with it, then move on – there is a very good chance that they mentally didn’t register that change. Replying with a confirmation requires a level of cognition on their part that makes it far more likely that they will remember the change was made.

Why Those Days That Feel Unproductive Are Actually Beneficial

Every so often, when I ask someone how their day is going, the response I get is akin to “Dude, I haven’t gotten a thing done all day because I’ve been in meetings and on phone calls.” I can understand that feeling of the day slipping by, having experienced it many times in my own career - the end of the day comes, and you feel like nothing changed on the to-do list. It can be frustrating.

However, I think this is pretty common once one gets towards the middle of their career. My N=1 experience is that at first, it was easy to have some number of things on my to-do list, and they could all be completed in relatively short order. However, as I’ve gained skills and experience, the projects I am involved in are more complex, with more moving pieces. This takes more time and more deliberate effort to keep things moving, leading to some days feeling like I haven’t really done anything. This, in turn, can easily lead to increasing my level of anxiety.

To use a football analogy - I eventually came to realize that not every play is going to be an 18 yard breakout run, or a 30 yd down-field pass. Sometimes a project just needs someone to pick up the ball, run it a couple yards, and get a new set of downs. It’s not sexy, it’s not glamorous; however, it is required to keep things moving. Those days spent on conference calls and meetings are part of those grind-it-out plays, where the purpose is simply to keep the ball moving. Just because it doesn’t appear that the needle has moved significantly, doesn’t mean that no progress has been made. It just means that additional prep work was needed to progress to the next step, now that everyone is on the same page.

This realization has led to some interesting outcomes for me.

First, the anxiety of not feeling productive is significantly reduced, which makes it easier to turn off the work-brain at the end of the day. This, in turn, has had a major (positive) impact on my interaction with my family at the end of the day, when my leaving the home office coincides with dinner preparation. I actually spoke a bit about this in a previous post about some of the challenges of working from home.

The second outcome is that those days actually provide an opportunity to step away from the weeds, and think about the current status in a big picture view. Usually projects start to stall when things become difficult, and they become difficult because there is lack of vision for a clear path forward. On those days where I find my calendar is full of meetings or calls, taking some time in between to step back and think about what the next best steps should be helps me maximize my efficacy on days when I have solid chunks of uninterrupted time.

As we progress through our careers, the scope of what we are doing changes, and the expectations and how we view progress and execution on our projects must change also. We have to learn to be kind to ourselves, and be OK with days that seem unproductive, but are still necessary.