The Sunjay Times

If you work on multiple projects at work, you will realize that it’s pretty similar to juggling balls in the air with your two hands. You might be thrown a new ball in addition to what you already have in the air (new project), you might be trying to place a ball on the ground without dropping the other balls currently in the air (tying up any open ends left on a mostly finished project), and perhaps you might also have your eyes peeled for the next ball you want to juggle (perhaps you have a semi-vivid vision of a project that will positively impact your team/dept/company’s bottom line).

If the above sounds familiar to you, then perhaps the phrase “analysis paralysis” would also ring a bell. Analysis paralysis is described in Wikipedia as an informal phrase applied to when the opportunity cost of decision analysis exceeds the benefits. In other words, too much planning or a discussion that goes nowhere, and no execution. Also known as “all talk and no bite”. I really hate that.

I’m a fan of David Allen’s GTD book and it has helped me manage my work flow better. In it, he talks about the “next action”, and I have come to realize how much important it is just being able to identify what to do next, without actually doing it yet. I’m trying to emphasize the value of planning without executing immediately which I have discovered by experience, speaking as a guy who likes to execute immediately after planning, and doesn’t really care about planning right away, after executing.

When multi-tasking and switching between tasks so often, it is easy to lose track of the end goal of each individual project. This is especially true when operating in an R&D environment where you are pushing the limits — so by definition, your end-goal cannot be rigidly specific. I found that planning the current project’s next step before temporarily halting it to work on another project to be a huge load off my shoulders. Allow me to illustrate.

My work queue would look similar to an old-skool single core processor (with no hyper-threading) such that at any given time, I am focused on a single project. Each project (because they are large), are broken up into smaller bite-size chunks.

After step 1 in project A and before step 1 in project B, I first identify the next step (as step 2) for project A, with the understanding that I’m just merely identifying the next step towards project A’s goal, but I will not actually do it yet. Then, I move on to execute step 1 of project B. Likewise with the end of project A, after step 1 of project B, I quickly determine project B’s step 2 before moving on to step 1 of project C.

What’s nice about this is that after I am done with step 1 of project C, when going into step 2 of project A, I no longer have to dig up my recollection of where I last left project A. I don’t have to ask myself, “alright, where did I last leave this project?”, and “Okay, now what was that next incremental step that I had meant to take again?”. I had already thought out the “next actions”, as Dave Allen would call it, and I can jump right into execution mode!

On the flip side, what I did before was that I would jump into execution right after planning a next action, resulting in me spending too much time on a single project, and neglecting other projects. In operating systems theory, that would be the equivalent of thread starvation because another thread is hogging all of the CPU. Also, from a psychological perspective, the longer you have neglected a project, the harder it is for you to jump back in it. Why? Because so much has happened since then, and now it’s way more difficult to remember where you last left it.

In addition, while working on my current project, my mind will often worry and think about that other neglected project — which is really unnecessary and just eats up memory and brain power, causing severe inability to focus on the current issues at hand.

I’m an advocate of action and don’t like worrying, so I prefer to act on a worry, than to worry. Acting on a worry gives me a peace of mind.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
– Mark Twain

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity