Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Clutter is a bunch of things that seem to pile up and get in the way. Physical clutter is easy to see. Mental clutter isn’t easy to see. Clutter – physical and mental – tends to drain energy with no action resulting. I recommend avoiding mental clutter by putting ideas into a place for later use.

While taking a walk, I see thousands of different homes in rural, suburban, and urban settings. Some of the homes are fabulous. Some of the homes are lacking much in comfort.

One of the attributes that separates homes is clutter. Some homes are surrounded with this and that and this and that and…well, a lot of clutter. See, for example, this little trailer and a lot of clutter to the right.

Next to the left is a photo of another house trailer with no clutter. This shows that you don’t have to own a large, red brick classic home to have no clutter.

Clutter affects the lives of the people living in those homes. I know people who live in places like that on the right. They despair much of the time. They know they should pick up something, but there is so much there, they don’t know where to start. They usually sit about thinking of where to start, but never actually starting.

Now to mental clutter. It is hard to see when a person has a lot of mental clutter. It is all in their head, and I don’t know how to see into anyone’s head. I have carried around a lot of mental clutter at times in my life. I struggled to think straight or think at all with mental clutter. I knew I should do something with all the ideas I had, but I couldn’t decide where to start. I thought and thought about starting, but never started.

I subscribe to techniques of arranging ideas like Jerry Weinberg’s Fieldstone Method. These techniques basically call for putting the ideas in an idea place. The placed ideas are no longer cluttering the mind. They are gone, no worries, no confusion, no more rearranging clutter.

When I have an idea, I put it on a 3×5 card. Later, I may put the content of the cards on my computer. Regardless of the media, the concept is simple – take ideas out of the mind and put them some place for later. That frees the mind to create new ideas or work with saved ideas.

by Dwayne Phillips

I like to work alone. Being alone, however, brings a heightened risk. There is great value in having another person to talk to. Absent others, checklists and other reminders are helpful.

I have been taking a walk this past week. I have been all alone in doing this. I won’t describe the stupid things I have done so far. Needless to say, I have wasted a little time and cost my feet a few unnecessary steps.

I am a pretty smart guy. Not the brightest, but I usually do okay. A week like this past one has re-taught me the value of having someone to talk to. Just to talk about what I am thinking or not thinking. Little things, but things that can make a difference.

Adjustments? Yes, I made some by the end of the week. I pause a few minutes at regular intervals. I check what is in each of my pockets – slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully. I check the time, the weather, and several things that could alter my day.

In the evening, I have checklist on my laptop computer’s desktop. I click on it the first thing and read through it. I created the checklist the first evening. I am glad that I have it.

I like to work alone – I really do. I have learned that I can work alone and accomplish much. I can also goof. A little humility comes along now and then to teach me the value of other people in even the smallest things.

by Dwayne Phillips

Quick, read the following and agree or disagree:

Smart people are wrong more often than stupid people.

I believe the above is true. It seems that smart people read, study, think, and propose ideas more often than stupid people. Stupid people seem to sit around and choose-your-own-stupid-activity (e.g. watch TV, surf the net, take a nap…).

An example with some numbers.

Smart Person:

• 5% error rate
• 1,000 proposed ideas
• Wrong 50 times

Stupid Person:

• 20% error rate
• 100 proposed ideas
• Wrong 20 times

See, the smart person is wrong more often than the stupid person.

Consider this the next time you wish so-and-so would stop with the wrong ideas.

by Dwayne Phillips

Customers don’t always act like responsible customers. Managers don’t always act like responsible managers. This is the real world, and often less-than-adult behavior exists. Sometimes you soothe people by giving them something they really want, even if it isn’t good for them.

Here is a true story.

I was the engineer. I was talking to a customer about their requirements.

Me: What are your requirements?

Customer: I need a new digital camera.

Me: What is it that you are trying to do?

Customer: I need a new digital camera.

Me: What is your desired end state?

Customer: I need a new digital camera.

It didn’t matter what I asked. The customer always answered:

Customer: I need a new digital camera.

by Dwayne Phillips

Analysis paralysis is where I sit and think a long time about what I should do. I recommend against such. Instead, experience has taught my that in most cases the best thing to do is one thing, and then the next, and then the next.

This has happened to me about a thousand times in my life. I walk into a situation with a thousand things to do (fatigue often brings hyperbole).

What do I do next?

I actually studied this situation in college. It was in a class on computer operating systems. One of the biggest jobs of an operating system is to select what task to do next. (Surprised? Yes, this is actually the case despite all the pretty pictures, sounds, videos and other things that companies tell you their operating systems do.)

An operating system can do the next task based on

• size
• time to execute
• priority
• time the task has been waiting

and all other sorts of attributes and combinations of attributes.

That was a great class to have taken. (Note, to have taken not to take. I hated the class at the time.) I learned that there are different ways to schedule tasks. There are different answers to that nagging question

What do I do next?

Outside of the billion-operations-per-second world of computers and back into the real world of my mundane existance, I have learned a good-enough answer to this question:

Just do something.

Hmm. That answer doesn’t appear so impressive, but it has worked for me. In most cases, it isn’t critical that I do the most important thing first. If  just do something now, then the next thing, then the next thing…I am okay.

One short example. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (not hyperbole, believe me) I walked into a storage room. Well, not exactly. I could barely open the door of the room because everything in the room was piled on the floor. The room was lined with storage shelves, and the shelves were empty.

“A few days,” I thought, “and I will have this place in shape.”

• I picked up one item from the floor and placed it on a shelf.
• I picked up the next item from the floor and placed it on the shelf.
• I picked up…

When the floor was empty of items I looked at my day-date watch. I had worked in the storage room for one hour. It was all done in one hour. Just do one thing, and then the next, and then the next.

I could tell many stories just like this one. The outcome was always the same. Just do something, and then the next, and the next, and I will be okay.

by Dwayne Phillips

People accomplish most of the work on projects. People don’t need to know every tiny detail from me. They are good at filling in the gaps themselves. Rounding off the details is fine in all work where people play a large role.

I am not a mathematician – I am an engineer. I recall in college how myself and my engineering friends would drive our mathematician friend crazy. We would round off numbers after a few decimal places. We would drop everything in a series after the second coefficient because the rest weren’t important. I mean, the math guy would really go crazy about that simplification. Those extra points, those extra coefficients – they didn’t matter to us.

Years later, I moved into managing engineering projects. I saw people using spreadsheets and predicting a one-hour task that was to occur five years into the future with five or six digits of precision. At first, I thought they were joking. They weren’t. They actually copied the six-digit number from the spreadsheet to their briefing. And no one in the briefing room laughed. I didn’t and still don’t understand.

Six-digit precision in projects isn’t worth the effort of typing the numbers. People are involved in projects; people fill in the gaps. Smart people are really good at filling in the gaps. I am not advocating just letting things go wherever they might. I advocate allowing good, smart people to do the jobs for which they were hired and are paid. People can do wonderful things if you let them. Tell them the goal; tell them the budget; tell them what you want, but don’t tell them to report their progress to six decimal places.

by Dwayne Phillips

Much has changed in computers in the past 30 years. Something that has not changed is that the input/output part of the computer is paramount. See, for example, the iPhone computer.

It was in the dark ages of computing back in 1978. I was taking a class in assembly language programming for the IBM 360. (For the young, see footnotes at the end of this post.) The textbook had been written by the head of the computer science department (also see footnote). At the start of each chapter, the author placed cute little quotes from people.

At the start of the chapter on input/output statements was something like this:

All that computing power doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t input/output.

You see, back in these dark ages, we were taught over and over that a computer had three basic parts:

1. the processor
2. the memory
3. the input/output

At the time, I knew an engineer working for IBM. I asked him about this input/output stuff. He confirmed the quote. “Anyone,” he assured me, “could make a processor, but no one could make input/output devices like IBM.”

Thirty years later, I still agree with the quote from the textbook. Intel makes the processors these days. Lots of people make the memory devices. Regardless, the input/output is still the most important. It is too bad that IBM is no longer the king of input/output. The new king is Apple.

Look at the iPhone. It is a computer comprising

1. the processor
2. the memory
3. the input/output

I don’t know what kind of processor my iPhone has. I cannot remember how much memory it has (I checked, 16GigaBytes which is 1,000 times more memory than the university’s mainframe computer in 1978). I do know about the input/output of my iPhone. It has

1. touchscreen
2. color graphics
3. camera
4. radio (cell phone)
5. speaker
6. microphone
7. GPS

I am probably missing some things in this list. The newer iPhones also have a compass which enables augmented reality applications – a big deal. These input/output devices have turned the computer from a large metal thing in an air-conditioned room into a powerful appliance I keep in my pocket.

Thirty years later, that statement buried in a lost textbook remains true:

All that computing power doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t input/output.

FOOTNOTES:

Assembly language was something we used before C to do things efficiently on computers. The IBM 360 was a big computer that banks and lots of other big businesses used.

Lo and behold, I found the textbook available from Amazon.com. A used version is available for one cent. A pretty good investment in computing history, “Assembly Language Programming and the IBM 360 and 370 Computers,” by Walter G. Rudd.

by Dwayne Phillips

A quick note about the writing aspects of the movie “Julie and Julia.”

I took my wife to see the movie Julie and Julia this past weekend. My wife is an avid cook, so this movie attracted her (the last movie we saw was the action-packed District 9 – she didn’t like that one).

Julie and Julia is about cooking celebrity Julia Child and blogger Julie Powell. My wife liked the cooking and the relationships. I liked the movie as both central characters were struggling with writing books. Common obstacles that both characters encountered:

• How long is long enough for a book?
• When do you stop writing?
• Are you a “writer” if you are not “published?”
• How do you keep your blog from interfering with your day job?
• What should the title of a book be?
• When do you say “no” to a publisher and start all over looking for another one?
• What do you do when a co-author doesn’t contribute much?
• How do you manage to stay married in all this?

Again, I liked the movie. The food looked good, the couples were funny, and it was about writing – not cooking (at least in my humble opinion).

Now one day we will discuss the merits of District 9.

by Dwayne Phillips

I am working a on process improvement this week. I wish I could state a brilliant insight. Alas, all I have is, “let’s try harder.” That reduces to having good people spend the time necessary to do a task well.

Blogs don’t always announce breakthroughs in any field of endeavor. Let’s downgrade that one:

Blogs rarely announce breakthroughs in any field of endeavor.

This blog post is more in line with, “Of course, everyone knows that.” I have noticed a funny thing about these everyone-knows-that practices:

People rarely practice the everyone-knows-that practices.

Case in point: my organization wants to do a better job at answering requests for proposals with proposals to garner new business. We have done okay at this in the past, but to grow the business we need to do better. I am working on a process improvement project. Trying to learn how we can respond to our customers better.

Guess what?

If we try harder, we do a better job.

I told you this was one of those everyone-knows-this practice. There is a lot that goes into “trying harder.” Some of what comprises trying harder are:

• Read requests as soon as they arrive
• Start working on proposals as soon as the requests arrive
• Have people who understand the customer work on the requests
• Have people who write well and quickly write the proposals
• Make decisions in enough time to allow people to write a good proposal
• Think a lot
• Treat your people well

Most of this comes to a central point:

Trying harder means devoting time.

Time is expensive, but not having any future business is also expensive. We will have to work a lot of overtime or hire good people to work on these things. Unpaid overtime is always an option, but I don’t advocate that.

Conclusion: trying harder is simple, but hard.

by Dwayne Phillips

A recent manager wrote his thoughts in the air with his finger. There was some good, some bad, and some annoyances with this habit. But, as with most things people do, there was plenty to learn.

I worked on a short project recently where the project manager wrote in the air. To emphasize a point, he literally moved his pointer finger through the air like a pencil spelling what he said in the air.

Needless to say, what he wrote in the air disappeared quickly. There is no magic whiteboard in the air; there wasn’t even any fog in the air to provide a lingering view of his writing. It went away as soon as he wrote it.

There is some good to his words disappearing so quickly. Most of his words, frankly, were not worth remembering let alone being recorded for posterity. I was happy to have them go as soon as they were written.

There is also some bad to his words in the air. Sometimes he would start by, “I’ve got it. This is really important.” Then her would state a list of eight or ten things to be done and how to do them. He finished with, “You got it? Okay, now go do it.” My protests of, “Wait, could you write that on paper or something?” fell to the floor as he had bolted from the room no doubt to hypnotize some one else in some other room with his finger dancing through the air.

There was also some annoyance about his writing in the air. After the first half dozen times I was no longer amused. This short project comprised 10 or 13 days of working 10 to 13 hours each day including the weekends. Fatigue has a way of making otherwise eccentric behavior downright irksome.

But there is some good to having temporary thoughts be recorded in a temporary manner. Projects have been ruined by some “thinking out loud” that was scribbled on a white board and then emblazoned with “DO NOT ERASE” next to them. Thinking out loud is fine as a technique to generate ideas, but I have found it to be un-erasable only on rare occasions. Most of the manager’s air writing was recording temporary thoughts, so it was good that it was written in a very temporary manner.