Discussion Forum > Independent Confirmation of "Easiest First"?
Aaron:
Hmm... not sure about that. Having been in similar situations in the Army to the one he describes, I find it difficult to believe that I would ever have asked myself "What can I do the fastest?". Reactions would be split-second - the result of training - a lot of it. My reaction as the Officer in Charge would be quite different from the Radio Operator's, and his would be quite different to the Platoon Sergeant's and his would be quite different to the Medic's.
In the example he gives of being back-ended in a car, you don't have time to think "What can I do the fastest?" It's an immediate reaction. And having the correct immediate reaction is a result of training and experience.
I can think of plenty of situations where exactly the opposite would apply. The only way you can get the big task done is to ignore the small tasks while you're doing it - the reason being that there is never any shortage of small tasks and you can't afford to be continually distracted. Think of a queue at a counter for service. Do you let the people who claim to "only need a few seconds" to jump in front of everyone else? No, you don't. You could of course have separate queues for quick and slow, but for that you would need one staff member for each queue.
Hmm... not sure about that. Having been in similar situations in the Army to the one he describes, I find it difficult to believe that I would ever have asked myself "What can I do the fastest?". Reactions would be split-second - the result of training - a lot of it. My reaction as the Officer in Charge would be quite different from the Radio Operator's, and his would be quite different to the Platoon Sergeant's and his would be quite different to the Medic's.
In the example he gives of being back-ended in a car, you don't have time to think "What can I do the fastest?" It's an immediate reaction. And having the correct immediate reaction is a result of training and experience.
I can think of plenty of situations where exactly the opposite would apply. The only way you can get the big task done is to ignore the small tasks while you're doing it - the reason being that there is never any shortage of small tasks and you can't afford to be continually distracted. Think of a queue at a counter for service. Do you let the people who claim to "only need a few seconds" to jump in front of everyone else? No, you don't. You could of course have separate queues for quick and slow, but for that you would need one staff member for each queue.
August 10, 2023 at 13:04 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Well, the other day, this video showed up in my feed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84blX7ir7MY
The CIA angle is a nice little "gimmick," but it's interesting that the core points made in the video for dealing with "in the moment, high stress task saturation" is interesting. It's interesting because it's a little different than what you find in something like the Checklist Manifesto, but has a lot of overlap with things Mark has introduced in his systems:
1. Accept that not everything will get done.
2. Take action, rather than planning/prioritizing
3. Do the fastest/quickest thing first.
That last one is the interesting one. In essence, the strategy of the video is that when you are dealing with a task saturation environment in which you don't have the ability to step back and plan everything out or prioritize or even deal with all of the tasks coming your way, the first thing to do is to free up processing power, and the best way to do that is to take immediate action on something that you can finish and get off your plate quickly.
The justification is that task saturation will make you "dumb" and you won't be able to make good decisions regardless, and so the most important thing is to create space and breathing room.
I think implicit in this is that if things are coming at you faster than you can possibly handle, then eventually you just have to let things sink and stay afloat yourself until you can stem the tide.
I found this interesting mostly because it was not yet another version of "prioritize!" Of course, the specific use case for this was when you were so overwhelmed that you literally couldn't think, but I think for some people, they are absolutely in that mode even during their normal working days.