Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We often have the choice of learning now or later. Often we don’t have the time to learn now, so we put it off until it really hurts.

Gosh, we are in a hurry so much of the time. We just can’t pause to think, reflect, and learn at this moment. Some time after now, we will have the time.

Before we rush into something, even before we move into something today, let’s pause and think a while. Will that work? Can we think enough and talk enough to learn a lesson now so we can move in a better direction.

Naw, let’s just do it. We can improve it later.

There is much wisdom in this avoidance of “paralysis by analysis.” Do something, learn, do better, repeat. That is pretty good advice that works in many situations.

One problem with this agile approach, that is the currently popular term for this approach, is that we wait too long between do and the other steps. We wait so long that the “learn” step is quite painful. If we had only paused a little while longer (the term little while being quite subjective), we would have avoided a painful learning period later.

Sigh. How long is long enough? How much pain later is too much pain? How quick is too quick? What is prudent? What is wasteful? Perhaps we could think about this long enough to know the answers. Perhaps we should take a step or two, learn a bit, and repeat. Perhaps we are still in this troublesome area where we don’t know what to do.

We can do better. Let’s pause a little longer, with “little” being subjective.