Ever had one of those days when all you’ve done is put out one fire after another? It’s all you can do just to keep up and your productive, interesting work sits on the back burner. It’s stressful and frustrating – it’s a reactive day.
But it doesn’t need to be that way – most emergencies can be prevented, or at least reduced, by identifying them early and taking appropriate action before they escalate to emergency status – this is pro-activity.
To be proactive, you need to start when everything is going fine. As one of your regular tasks, identify potential problems – ask yourself ‘Is it all really fine?’ and ‘What could go wrong?’ Then either prevent the problem or put an action plan in place to deal with it.
You don’t need to focus on the negatives all the time, just make a small effort when the going is smooth to stop problems becoming bigger than they need to be.
The 10:1 law
There’s a law of software development that says it’s 10 times cheaper to incorporate a feature early (i.e. at the design phase) than at the end of the project. This same rule applies to project management – it’s far less work to prevent an emergency than to have to deal with it, and much less stressful too.
The lesson here is to invest your ‘everything’s fine’ time in seeking and destroying future emergencies. This leads to even more ‘everything’s fine’ time, and a much easier life.
What could YOU do with your life if you had just a few more hours each day?
2 Responses to “It isn’t fine when everything’s fine”