Or, learning to love process/order and prevent chaos
TLC's show Jon & Kate plus
Eight has
both of us hooked. We started watching after we learned we were
expecting Nicholas, partially in a funny "At least we don't have eight
kids" way. But the show is entertaining, and has given us a couple of
clues about being parents that might be helpful down the road. Nothing
super revelatory, but stuff that is good to hear again.
{vspace="5" width="285" align="right"
height="201" hspace="10"}oWatching the recap show about parenting, Kate
said something to the effect that "Without order we'd have chaos and
then the kids would rule the house." Specifically, both of them talked
about how important it is to keep a very regular schedule for the kids.
So that, for example, they know that noon is lunch time and its time to
be quiet and sit at the table. Of course, as the kids grow they may try
to disrupt the schedule, but the every day routine is key to keeping
their household running day-to-day. Not just operating, mind you, but
operating so that the parents aren't over stressed and so that the
children also learn how to behave and develop good habits.
Meanwhile, I've noticed myself at work becoming much crankier about
people not following processes or making up for a lack of organization
with "urgency" and hustle. It's not that I don't appreciate that, as
a client focused services firm the need to be flexible. Its that, as a
programmer, although this goes I think for any role at work, I have a
number of client projects that require my attention on any day. The
"little" tasks and tweaks that push themselves to the top of my queue
come at the expense of attention to other client requests. And when a
particular task, like debugging a broken site or implementing a new
feature, requires by necessity a good, uninterrupted stretch of time to
focus on it, the disruptions are even more magnified.
What am I asking for? At the core, I'd like to not have tasks dropped
in my lap at the last minute, which are urgent because adequate planning
was not done to get them assigned and worked on. I'd also like people
to actually follow the recommended best practices for Task delegation,
Resource planning, and Bug tracking.
Does this mean I think any of my co-workers are childish, or immature,
or somehow not competent. By no means. I'm merely saying that work
could be a lot less chaotic and stressful if we all were disciplined
about sticking to agreed upon processes. Am I perfect in this regard?
Hardly. There are a lot of habits I know I need to work on to get
better at, particularly in avoiding distractions at work so I'm not
wasting time on less important, but sometimes personally more
interesting, tasks.