Program yourself! Part 2

This is part two of a three part series. If you missed it, part one is here.

Detecting and dealing with overburden

When it comes to overburden, we and our organizations will tend to show striking similarities to a crashing computer program. We will not respond to requests, be it answering e-mails or calls, deny service, schedule appointments for some time later and not deliver results on time, or deliver incomplete or faulty results. And even worse, most advice on dealing with overburden only tends to reinforce or aggravate the situation. Unfortunately, there are no sources to back me up here, so I can only provide an example to illustrate.

Let me introduce you to the "200 empty files challenge": What do you think would happen, if we created a new empty Excel sheet, made 199 copies of that file and dragged all the copies into Excel to open them? You don’t have to try, because I will tell you. And if you really have to try, please save your work, make backups in the cloud or on a stick and get ready to either force-close Excel or reboot your PC entirely. First, Excel's interface will disappear, it will go irresponsive, turn white and show you the doughnut. After a short while, it will busily clutter your desktop with new windows, which stay blank until it finally recovers, gets hung up or even take your computer with it, crashing.

Now what do you think, a person will do when they receive 200 E-Mails? One, disappear, not answering their phone or more e-mails, while busily tending to all the mails for the next couple of days or weeks, finally answering them after a considerable delay, or two, instantly delete them all, not even reading them. Both approaches bear a striking resemblance to Excel struggling with 200 empty files. Both remind me of a crashing computer program. Either way, that person is clearly overburdened. And what do you do with a program that’s non-responsive? More often than not, you open the Task-Manager and Force-Close it. As for your work that means cancelled projects, overrun budgets, being reassigned, another reorganization, frustrated coworkers, angry customers, summarized: a lot of bad things.

It doesn't have to be that way. You see, there are other programs. Let's throw 200 empty html files at Firefox. And you're welcome to try this one, because Firefox handles things a lot more gracefully. First, it will tell you, that you are about to do something silly. Then, if you continue to insist, it will just go on opening 200 empty tabs. You could even open another tab and watch a video on YouTube, while it is still busy loading your empty files. The video will play without delay, stutter or lag. What is the difference, between the way that Excel and Firefox handle opening files, then? Simple: Excel puts work first, i.e. opening the files, Firefox is built to be usable while you wait for it to open other pages in the background. It puts interaction first. Ironically, what also sets Firefox apart, is that was built to access pages from a slow medium, i.e. the internet. For Excel on the other hand, the assumption was, that files are always read from your local hard disk, which should be quick. Yet, when put to the test, Firefox seems fast while Excel is not just slow, but fails outright.

So, staying with our metaphor, I liken programs to our workflows, our processes, how we collaborate or the way a company is organized and run. How can you be more like Firefox and less like Excel then, you ask?

• You need to see, that you are overburdened, when you run out of time for interaction.
• And again, I suggest, you should value interaction over long work.
• Keep Interactions short and sweet.
• Discussions are long tasks, because they are always ongoing and need to be treated as such.
• Take regular breaks from long tasks.
• Listen to your body, when to take a break.
• Use Interactions to trigger a break from long tasks.

And finally, you need to learn: How to team up properly, which I will cover in the last part of program yourself!