delay action for guaranteed results

What’s a guaranteed way to make little to no progress? Procrastinate.

This blog focuses on positive applications of the Pareto Principle. It’s exciting and motivating to think about the one lever that can move the world in the direction you’d like. Unfortunately, as easy as some of these tools are to apply in your favor, some tools are easier to apply against you. Worse, still, you apply these instruments against yourself. Procrastination is one of these.

Procrastination is the delay of action. If you told someone to wait to act, it could be interpreted as patience. Isn’t patience a virtue? Yeah, that’s one of the tricks of procrastination. While procrastinating you’re delaying action on high value endeavors and looking for instant gratification through low value activities. Procrastination is a highly leveraged version of the 80/20 rule. Your delay of the right action makes the result you want impossible. Now stop procrastinating and go do the right act for you right now.

when lacking information, go to the best source

I had a boss that liked to give directions before she understood the full task at hand. She would tell me what she thought I should start doing based on her current understanding. Unfortunately, her understanding represented a small percentage of what I needed to act effectively. In these situations, I went to the source. Because of the team-based nature of the job, a team lead was usually better informed and closer to the information. Instead of taking my manager’s word and running in my own direction, I would go to the source. The team lead might not always have much more information than my boss provided, but usually that person held meaningful context for the request. It’s common to receive first instructions that are ambiguous. The 80/20 rule helps us recognize that 20% of the details will get us at least 80% of our solution. Lacking details is not a reason to refrain from action. It’s a signal to get more information. I’ve often found that going to the source of information provides valuable context even when my information doesn’t increase or improve. As a result, I’m able to get the ball rolling in the right direction without wasted efforts.

learn by doing

Do you need to learn how to use an app? Are you trying to understand a multi-step math problem? Do you want to memorize a recipe? You'll gain more insight and better memorize the content by also physically doing and not just reading the instructions.

debrief with the team for additional insights

By going through a debrief of my first demo with colleagues, I discovered that I have a wealth of knowledge I can share even with more experienced colleagues. Going through the process can reveal learnings you would not get otherwise.

learn by doing

Go and do. A live performance or competition will show you exactly what you know and where you stand in your abilities. Put yourself in front of a real audience who will judge you. You will learn things no study or practice test can teach you.

you need less information than you think to take action

Starting a recent project, I read the quick start guide and only 3 out of 144 slides from the instructions. Based on this reading I clarified the objectives, requirements, and framework of the assignment which provided the critical understanding to act. In this case, I gleaned all of that from roughly 3% of the associated materials.

keep performing, don't dwell on mistakes

Act confident. Be confident. Keep delivering the presentation and ignore your mistakes. Even if the audience notices any mistakes, they’ll take more notice if you lose your composure.

Fail fast, learn and accomplish more

When faced with an unfamiliar or ambiguous situation it is helpful to put a strategy in place and take exploratory action. Much time can be wasted on low value theorizing. This is particularly true as the risks or costs of failure fall. In comparing the time investment of researching and theorizing a solution for an hour versus experimenting on a solution in that same time, the latter approach usually yields better and more specific insights.  Thus, better solutions are obtained faster. Particularly with internal work assignments I’ve benefited from the fast to failure approach. An additional benefit to testing ideas with action is that you will know why an alternative is not viable. This is a strong point from which to champion your final solution.