Avoiding "All Smoke, No Fire" syndrome.

There was a woman at the last startup I worked at, lets call her Z.  Z was a juggernaut of energy, always talking, high volume, lots of movement. I brought her into the project that eventually got spun out as a company because I had previously worked 'around' her, and thought she was smart and had good UX foo. She was smart, and she did have good ideas about UX, but those attributes were offset by an incredible lack of focus that not only paralyzed her, but everyone that worked with her.

One day I complained about this to a mutual friend, G. G smiled knowingly and said: "Ah, Z. She's all smoke and no fire". We both smirked at each other, because as far as we were concerned, we were quite the opposite.

Well, Karma's a bitch, because I have to look at the last couple of weeks and flatly declare myself to be All Smoke, No Fire. Part of it is that I'm working at a new company and don't have all of the expertise I need, so  I waste time doing the wrong thing or looking for the right thing because I want to be seen as a good hire. Part of it is that the new company is undergoing a severe fire drill and it's one of those 'all hands on deck' moments that feels great when you're 23, not so great when you're 40, and a little bit of thrashing is inevitable. And most of it is because despite my best intentions, I get caught up in the moment and just dive in and give it my best shot. Again, and again, until I collapse or I brute force my way through. This tendency may be admirable in a battery ("It just keeps going, and going, and going...") but it's wasted motion that I'm never going to get back. Yes, that's the kind of stuff that you think about when you're 40. It's all about conservation of momentum.

The key here is that when I react, when I just 'jump in', I end up wasting a lot of time figuring out what I should have taken the up front time to figure out. And for most goal oriented tasks, what I need to figure out the most is my exit criteria. Other ways to put it:

1. when do I know I've done as much as I can
2. when do I know it's time to move on
3. when do I know I'm done

If I can't answer these succinctly, then I'm probably not doing a goal oriented task. Staying married, or having kids, for instance do not have exit/success criteria. But if I _can_ answer those questions concretely, I have a task that is goal oriented and therefore is possible.

A logical question at this point: Who (the fuck) cares? It's about the process, not the goal, right? Sure.  For those other things (see marriage, kids). But for the shit that has to get done, i.e. at work, where I am compensated for how effective I am, or fired if I am not getting my shit done well, it would be plain fucking stupid to not have solid exit criteria in place for everything I do, every day. Because if I can establish exit criteria that everyone around me agrees with, they'll know when I've done something well. And I'll have proof that I did it well. Which leads to more confidence, bigger tasks, and (ultimately) more fun.  Not only work, but life as well. When I trained for my marathon last year, there was a lot of mileage/effort that I needed to get through in order to feel confident about running 26.2 miles. The really hard stuff doesn't get done by showing up and looking good. It gets done when you think about it, plan out your execution, and execute.

Plus, establishing exit criteria for daily tasks helps maintain a sense of calm in the middle of a lot of chaos. And, honestly, after the last couple of weeks, I need that sense of calm, because without it I'm just churning in place, doing nothing worth remembering.

So here we go. Day 0 of All Fire, No Smoke. When I get up in the morning, I'm going to break down my day and what I need to do to get the goal oriented shit in my life done, and done well. Then I'm going to have more time/energy to spend on the non goal oriented things that make life really worth living. Fuck, yeah.