Top Of Mind

Half a year ago, I wrote about how I prioritize my ScrumOfOne backlogs. (Hold my horses… more than one personal backlog, I say? A future post covers this…) What I am finding now is that while, yes, each backlog is prioritized based on its vision, the backlog for the current sprint consists of items that are top-of-mind.

Idealism is great. It also takes discipline. While, yes, taking steps to grow me via my different facets is the road of continual life improvement I prefer to take, sometimes dealing with boxes after a recent move is an itch I feel I must scratch. (Hold the smart phone… what’s this ‘facets’ business I’m talking about? Did I just throw in the kitchen sink? Nope, that’s FAUCETS, and that future post will cover this, too…)

Yet, removing post-move clutter (floor-al chaos?) does not feel important, especially in that strategic sense; I don’t feel like I’m growing, nor investing in myself… I feel like I am delaying. So, fine, I could work on that and take direct steps towards life mission output and processes, but this does nothing for day-to-day living conditions. Thus, both strategic goals and tactical goals are top-of-mind. Oh, horsefeathers, what do I do?

Of course, rid myself of the refugee motif in the apartment. While, yes, tactical vs. strategic trade-offs are not usually this drastic, I try to accomplish the lesser of the two evils anyhow, thus choosing to tackle tactical backlog stories first. Thankfully, David Allen of ‘Getting Things Done’-fame agrees with this approach. After getting control (mastering workflow) is getting perspective (horizons of focus), where we start with addressing next actions (buy cat food) before addressing principles and purpose: get deck-clearing capability first before being able to think at a higher level.

There you have it, folks – how I prioritize my sprint backlog with more ease of mind: address tactical stories at the top of your mind, thus preparing for strategic stories by clearing your mind.

Don’t Have A Fine Day

Don’t do it. Just don’t. Whatever it takes.

If somebody asks you, “Greetings, citizen! How fares your day?” and you say, “Fine!” …then… think about that.

Fine? Do you really want a fine day? Just… fine? It’s your day, so if you could chose an adjective to be associated with it, would you really want it to be ‘fine’? Come now, fair citizen, surely you wish this not.

This line of thinking comes from ‘Tribes’ by Seth Godin, where he says that if you are having a fine day, then you’re not leading, because leaders are the heretics, out causing trouble, passionately speaking out against the status quo and creating change because the marketplace demands it. To be a leader, I can see this definitely applying.

To be a living human being, I can’t see why this shouldn’t apply.

If you’re having a fine day, then it is not an exciting day. Could you have an exciting day and honestly say it was just, well, y’know, fine? This echoes a definition of happiness from ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ by Tim Ferriss, where he equates happiness to excitement. If you are doing things that excite you (excites you to your core), then you are living life happily.

Let’s take this a step further and rock the boat a little: If you’re having a fine day, then you are not happy.

Ending on a lighter note, I challenge you to not have a fine day. Ever. Fo’ realz. Don’t float along the currents of everybody else’s life. Wake up every morning and tell yourself to make waves. I make this a part of my morning Scrum.

Stay in trouble, citizen.

Short-Term Press Release

You have a direction in life? Holy cow! Congrats!

Wait, you don’t? That’s cool. Having a direction for life is pretty major. Let’s start with setting a direction for, say, the next two weeks.

Before I found my life calling, I had a large prioritized list of things I wanted to be and do. Spanning numerous aspects of myself (musician, ScrumMaster, runner, host, boyfriend, …), I had little focus to my stories within each two-week Sprint. At some point, I adopted something I read in ‘Rework’ by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, a couple of guys from 37signals: the concept of a short-term press release – What is the exciting new thing you will share proudly with the world at the end of your Sprint?

The Sprint Press Release became a focal point about which my stories would congregate and, in a sense, filter themselves. A theme would arise. The similarly-themed backlog items would, through the Sprint, help each others’ completion because they were related. They would all share the same spirit, that which is represented not by the sum of parts (functionalities of all stories, combined), but by the whole, an example of punctuated evolution where a new functionality emerges that is relatively large, possible only because the smaller stories were completed.

Thus, rally stories within each Sprint around a theme. They’ll be easier to get done, and because they’re along the same vein, that’s a sense of –

You have a direction for the next two weeks? Holy cow! Congrats!

Gift of Time

Have you ever found yourself saying,

Drat – this thing is due in a week/day/hour. If I only had another week/day/hour.

Think about it: If you had just one more week/day/hour, oh man, it’d be heaven! You don’t have a lot of time left (whatever the reason, you’ve accepted your current circumstances and are moving forward), and you’re anxious, and having that extra time would seem like… a gift. Oh, if you only had that extra time…

OK, but let’s say you’re not at this late stage; you are in the middle of something with a deadline. Try this:

Give yourself an artificial deadline to give yourself the gift of time.

If it is due in two weeks, get it done in one. I feel this helps with those prone to procrastinating.

Just feel it, though… put yourself there… you bust out whatever you can in one week, and at the end of that week, you take a step back, look it over, and you know what? It just actually might be good enough! If not, oh look, you have another week at your disposal.

In ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ by Tim Ferriss, he talks about Parkinson’s Law, which goes, “a task will swell in perceived importance and complexity in relation to time allotted for its completion”, to which he recommends setting artificially short and clear deadlines.

The trick is now to motivate yourself to accept this new shorter deadline.

Worry to Action

I was reading ‘Mastering The Art of a Worry-Free Life‘, an article at the blog Dumb Little Man. You are stepped through how to deal with worry, ultimately resulting in an action plan. And here I am, thinking, “Huh… actually… Scrum kind of deals with that!”

By working on the stories of the current sprint, and focusing on getting those items to a state of done, you’re not thinking about other things. In a sense, you are staying in the moment (step 2 of 6 from the article).

Regarding an action plan – heck, Scrum steps you through setting up and managing a partially dynamic list that is prioritized.

So yeah, this dumb little man never thought of ScrumOfOne as a tool for dealing with worry.