There was a time when business was going terrible and we had just added a third child to our family. Let me tell you three kids under 6 is a lot of work. Two kids with diapers, and one that wants to be helpful and really isn't helpful yet. The third time you have to explain to your oldest that you don't poke the baby in the eye because it looked like it was going to cry you're about done with everything.
In the midst of this life, money was tight and I had projects to ship. The best decision I made was to ignore everything and focus two weeks on getting one project shipped. I didn't check email at all, I just put my head down and shipped the biggest project so I could get paid.
The big revelation was that, no one missed me. People solved their own problems because they were fully capable, when I responded to everything fast it was easier to shovel problems to me.
I had fallen into a speed trap. When I made myself available quickly I made my self feel indispensable, and really I was doing busy work others could do without me.
Spotlight Effect
One thing I constantly remind my children about is that no one cares about what they're wearing unless they're trying to be mean. As much as you look at your clothes, hair, or whatever other people are doing the same thing about their appearance. They pretty much don't care about you, so just do what you find comfortable and ignore the rest of the stuff because in a few years you'll realize that you never should have spent a moment thinking about the stupid shit that teenagers obsess over.
Jobs try to get us to inflate our sense of importance with yearly reviews where we convince them how indispensable we are. This falls into our own need to feel wanted and validated, mostly by people don't meaningfully shape your life over the long-term.
Don't be slow, be useful
Systems that consume tasks fast get fed more tasks faster. While that can be a good thing, it can also turn a reasonable day into something crazy. If you're fast at email, you'll get more email which you'll need to do faster.
The more tasks you get done, the more tasks you'll get given. There can be good aspects to this, in that you can become so good that you gain promotions and income which you can leverage later into better work-life balance, but it can also mean that everyone dumps their shit on you so that you're doing all the overtime all the time while the credit is being spread around the team.
Fast res ponders get more volume of work, high-quality contributors get more leverage over their work life.
Presence over speed
Obsessing over speed also means that you cultivate a mind that needs to constantly flit between different stimuli. This builds the habit of switching which leads to attention fragmentation instead of deep meaningful work. It can also mean that in your downtime, when you should be recharging, you're instead looking for the next thing to do. I've felt it, instead of enjoying a summer afternoon in the hammock, I'm constantly thinking of some chore around the house that's not getting done.
It's hard to be present in any moment when you've spent so much time finishing shit so you can then find other shit to do.
I say instead of prioritising throughput for tasks, pick the ones you can commit to and do them well. Become known as someone that does an excellent job at the tasks they agree to do.
I built a business on the back of that idea. Not being the fastest but being the one that would spend the time required to fix an issue that others had given up on.
If you can train yourself to focus on the task at hand without trying to push it through as fast as possible, you can gain benefits in other parts of your life. A slowed pace means it's easy to sit with your loved ones without needing to find random stimulus to keep that hyper-active brain fed with the next thing to do.
Being present is hard, and it's fulfilling.
