Chaos, in its most perceivable form, is the loss of control that directly impacts your senses. In reality, it is the depiction of non-prioritized actions that constantly barrage you for your attention. During a chaotic episode, you have no bearing on what to accomplish first and you feel lost. It’s maddening and can shake the core of your existence when it’s an every day occurrence. But how do we sift through the chaos? Did we do something wrong? Can we do better?
Build a system
In manufacturing, it’s vital that there is a system in place to get everything in the right order. If you don’t get it right, you risk having the product break. In most cases, this isn’t going to be a big deal. But what if you were a car manufacturer? In the past 30 years, car manufacturer have had less and less manufacturing issues. Now we’re to the point where we can place the blame on Quality Assurance (QA), Software, Electronics, and/or Design choices. How did that happen though? How did we get from 300,000 parts to something that mechanically just works? The answer is two fold – through innovation but most of the credit lies within building a system. Before Henry Ford revolutionized the factory, there was rampant chaos without a system.
What is a system?
A system is a set of guidelines to help architect your throught process. While there is a learning curve to adapt to the system, you trust in the process you built. The beauty of the process is that you can adapt it to what works for you. To make sense of the chaos, your system must be able to enable you to:
- Filter out the noise
- Categorize your tasks
- Consolidate where possible
- Allow you to ruthlessly, and unapologetically, prioritize
- Get shit done
If we take the above five steps at face value, we can see how this would work in an example below.
Johnny and Sally both have problems that you need to solve. They have a problem spread of 20 problems and you have one hour to finish this. Since you don’t know either of these people – you’re just focused on keeping both Johnny and Sally alive and safe (Step 1: Filter out the noise). Now you’re down to around 10 tasks total which include 1) feeding them, 2) keeping them safe, and 3) making them delighted (Step 2: Categorize your tasks). You’ve now categorized the 10 tasks into 6 as you have to do three things for two of them.
Now, to feed both of them – they can eat the same thing. So as you prepare you find a note listing the things that both of them will eat. Cook that and save some time (Step 3: Consolidate where possible). You’re now down to 5 tasks down from 6.
Based on your current evaluation and quick check, both Johnny and Sally have no issues with safety other than Johnny is sitting on an almost broken stool. You quickly swap Johnny’s chair out with a solid one and you’re down to 1) feeding them, and 2) making them delighted.
Let’s not overcomplicate the rest and get them fed, that’s the way to unapologetically prioritize (Step 4: Ruthlessly prioritize). If you have time we’ll talk about delighting them! You’ve now finished the essentials and can review the nice to haves with your remainder time (Step 5: Get shit done).
On the other hand, those who have not chosen to follow any system, try to do a few things at once and often times manage to pull it off. However, they did not plan and just thought they’d work through it. This causes mental burden and exhaustion at the end of the day.
Become a task robot
While you don’t need to be devoid of emotions, when evaluating your system or what you need to get done immediately – become a robot. What I mean by this is to just take everything at face value and don’t convolute what you need to do with what you’re supposed to do. You’re focused on the task at hand and don’t have time for anything else. It’s not life or death, usually, so just do the best you can. If you fail, you may be late or there may be some upset parties but that’s life. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things so just take it and move on and take it one task at a time.
Ruthlessly prioritize
With the world being as demanding as it is, you’re always going to have more requests than time to accomplish everything. If you’re a people pleaser, bad news – this is worse for you. In order to prioritize effectively, you should determine what’s essential to get done. This means – everyone will be safe, healthy, and somewhat happy if you get these things done. If you don’t have time, you don’t have time. You’ll get to it eventually, but you need to prioritize what you’re ABLE to accomplish. Don’t bring home your work habits of overpromising and overdelivering. Give yourself enough time so that you can enjoy home. Life is not a series of sprints, and you need to ruthlessly prioritize to continue the walk we call living life.