Should, I, Do, This, Now?

The sentence you can play with when pressure is highest.

Managing priorities sounds like an easy task everybody has to deal with. But in reality, when the pressure is on it’s one of the hardest things to do. Everything might seem or feel equally important. And trust me, I’ve been there more than once.

There’s this once sentence that might help you when you feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to remember. In fact, it might be something you already thinking when you are wrestling with your workload. Please allow me to help you get way more out of this sentence than you might have done before. By adding just one character.

The Comma.

The extra tool that I want to offer you has everything to do with the comma’s that are within that sentence.

The comma is used in many contexts and languages, mainly to separate parts of a sentence such as clauses and items in lists mainly when there are three or more items listed. The word comma comes from the Greek κόμμα (kómma), which originally meant a cut-off piece, specifically in grammar, a short clause. — Wikipedia

You see, the comma divides your sentence. It pauses your reading and gives you time to reflect on the thing that was said before as a separate thing.

I’m stalling aren’t I. Sorry, not sorry. But I’m doing it for you! Hoping that it makes it easier for you to remember ;-).

The parts

If we look at the entire sentence, it is a question that leaves no room for thinking. When you are overwhelmed, you’ll be inclined to say ‘yes’ on the majority of occasions, and you still haven’t rid yourself of your problem, let alone taken the opportunity to think of a different solution.

When we look at the parts, each part could be substituted with a different word. Which will end up with roughly the same length of a sentence, focussed on the same target (getting your priorities straight), but possibly with an entirely different outcome in priority, pressure, personal energy or even the product at all.

Let’s have a look, shall we?

Should

‘Should’ is a guilt word. A word that implies you have a bad morale or ethics if you wouldn’t do it. However, you could replace it with words like:

• Must (indicating urgency and ramifications if not done)
• Do I like to (in order to understand if this gives or drains your energy)
• Could (dares you to consider if there’s a possibility)
• Does it make sense that (reflects on the quality of the solution)
• Was a payment made so that (when you have your own company, sometimes we attribute more value to the prospect of something than the customer actually committed to)

I

So the question lands on your desk, but is it really yours to solve? Other alternatives could be:

• [someone else] ( maybe someone else can pick it up?)
• The team (it’s not your personal problem, it was the commitment of the team, and together you are stronger than you alone)
• The stakeholder / customer (perhaps you can redirect the question to the customer, and make them reconsider or prioritise (that at least means exchanging one request for the more urgent request!)
• My boss (when you are working for a boss, running away all his problems make them never land up on his desk, therefore he has no problems to begin with. Sometimes, something needs to break in order for it to get fixed)

Do

Doing is immediate of character. It implores movement, and when that’s the only consideration you take it becomes increasingly difficult to see the alternatives. Perhaps, there are other words you could employ that are more fitting for the situation. Think of words like:

• understand / know (maybe you don’t have to act, but you do have to know about it in some way, form or shape. Perhaps you actually need to completely understand all the details of it, or being able to roughly understand its outlines is enough)
• pay for (maybe you can hire somebody, or pay for a solution. Or maybe you explicitly understand that spending this money wouldn’t make any sense at all)
• reject (thinking of the opposite of an idea might bring you to a better balance. Can you reject the task? Should you? Would it make sense to push back now, to get more room to bring the other things on your plate to a good outcome?)

this

You’ve got a task that you need to do, but is that actually the right way to solve the problem? Sometimes we tend to work on a provided solution which might solve the symptoms but doesn’t resolve the underlying cause.

Consider how this solution fits in time.

• Do you actually have the time to solve something for long-term, while there might not even be a long-term if other things aren’t addressed as well
• Can you solve it with the mid-term in mind? Going towards your vision, while still remaining to be pragmatic in some sense?
• Can you do 1–1 symptom solving in a hacky way which solves the stingiest of pains but not all of them? (Make sure that a hack is never a long-time solution. Adding depth to a hack to cover most use-cases might remove too much pain to revisit the hack later-on and ruins your business case to uncover and enable actual business opportunity)

now

Okay okay, so it needs to be done. But should it be instantly? Can it be carried over the weekend, the sprint, the quarterly planning, etc? The more you are inclined to answer on the ‘now’ side of the spectrum, the heavier the pushback on ramifications should be. E.g. if it needs to be done now, tell me what I should drop immediately. If you need me to do it in 3 months, I can most definitely fit it in somehow.

Conclusion

Using that comma in: Should, I, Do, This, Now and consciously playing with the alternatives of each one of the words in that sentence, can help you with balancing your workload better. It requires you to instil a rationale behind your choice, which is carefully weighed against its alternatives. Let me leave you with a couple of variations as an example:

• could, someone of my team, do, this, next week?
• Must, I, really understand this fully, before tomorrow?
• Can, someone else, communicate this, during standup?
• Can, the team, help me, understand this, this sprint?
• Do I like to, think about this, in my spare time?
• Should I hire, someone else, to think about a better solution, once I free up budget?
• Did I get paid to, build, the most complex solution?

With a high amount of stress, humans tend to ball up within our own little bubble and repeat the mean little lies we’ve told ourselves over and over again. When you notice that it’s all too much, think back of that comma and push the breaks in these sentences. Because often there are better ways than the ones that got you in to this mess.

Good luck whoever you are!