Prioritize and Execute

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Life as a consultant can often feel overwhelming, and I have certainly felt just like that for a couple of months now. However, when things feel rough, I think about the books I’ve read by Jocko Willinck, where he lays out the concept of Prioritize and Execute. He tells stories from his war deployment where one of his teammates falls and is badly injured, while they come under assault and must deploy their machine gun instantly. At the same time, a thousand other things happen and there is only time to do a couple of them… I think you see where this is going. There is no way on earth that consultancy work can come even close to that pressure (even though it can feel like it). And still, Jocko and his team survived using the only method available. Rank-order the list of tasks that needs to be done and start to tick them off in order of importance. What else can you do?

Do note my choice of word here “feel”. If it feels rough, that does not imply that it actually is rough. I think most of it is just that, a feeling in my head only. It is a fact that most of the things you worry about never happen. Just writing these words down something hits me. I should start to write down the things I worry about, and then go back in a month and see how many of them came true. That might put things into perspective. Worrying only creates extra workload to no use. But it is also ridiculous to tell someone “not to worry”. That’s like telling someone not to be tired.

I have been thinking about the personality traits of civil engineers lately, and more specific on the trait Neuroticism and whether it is a useful or burdening trait for an engineer. The higher you are in neuroticism, the more you tend to worry. I suppose engineers worry a lot, that is kind of the whole point of our work. We worry, identify what causes the worry and then we fix the problem with a technical solution. And then we start over, until there are no more problems left to worry about – which of course will never happen. That’s why nothing would ever get done if the world was run by engineers. We will keep polishing ad ifinitum. I am not claiming that every engineer is neurotic. My wife, a structural engineer, is the least neurotic person I have ever met, and she seems to be doing just fine. Maybe there are several ways to worry?

Being a self-employed consultant is a never-ending source of things to worry about, not only related to engineering. I have started to consider it a good thing that my to-do list has finally broken down completely a couple of months ago and just expands. It is the consultant’s equivalent to Jocko’s war story. You have 100 things to do but you will only have time to do ten of them. So, to the best of your best ability, pick those ten things, rank-order them and get going. Leave the rest. Sometimes you will make mistakes in your rank ordering. If the things you deemed unimportant were indeed crucial – you WILL hear back from them. The ranking problem will thereby fix itself. By working this way for a couple of weeks now, I am somewhat amazed by how much I have achieved. I haven’t stopped worrying by any means and I also suffer from anxiety, but it is much, much less severe than before. My past self would have been torn to shreds long time ago. And I know why.

I am a father, which is highly relevant when discussing the Prioritize and Execute concept. If I hadn’t had my little boys (and my two dogs) I would have made very different decisions when rank-ordering. For starters, I would have worked day and night. When you are only responsible for yourself, you can do that just fine. That’s one of my big regrets by the way. I wish that I had worked ten times harder when I was young and had the energy to do it and no responsibility. But I lacked the necessary wisdom. Now I have the wisdom, but I am getting older and the energy is lacking and my responsibilities now lies with other people and not myself. People are dependent on me, and that’s why I cannot work day and night.

Earlier in this text, I proposed writing down the things I worry about and then looking back at the writings in a month and hopefully laugh at my paranoia. Tonight I will write “I worry about not spending enough time with my sons”. That one, however, I do not think will fall into the “never happen” bucket. That’s why it probably needs to go quite high on the rank-ordering list.