Predicting recall

It’s not a shock that I can’t remember everything. No one can. And I’ve got so much crammed into my brain that I can’t hope to remember it all.

OK, I can hope.

There’s plenty of stuff that I know that I once knew and predict I can’t recall. There’s other stuff that I won’t be surprised if I can’t bring back.

But it’s surprising when I predict that I can remember something and I can’t.

Who shot John Kennedy?

A while ago I remember not remembering the name of the guy who shot John Kennedy.

I would have predicted that I knew it. But I didn’t. Surprise!

How could I forget his name?

Everybody knows his name. It was…

There was a hole in my memory.

I could see all around it, but not see into it.

I knew that Jack Ruby had shot the guy. And the guy’s name was…

empty

I remembered the film that was taken by Leon? (actually Abraham) Zapruder of Kennedy being shot by…

What was his name?

I remembered Jim Garrison in Louisiana who had started an investigation into the conspiracy that had led to Kennedy being shot by some other guys and…what was the guy’s name again?

I knew he’d married a Russian woman, and his name was…

I could see the rifle he’d used and his name was…

And the shot that killed Kennedy had been fired from the Texas Book Depository by… who was he?

I had a hole in my memory that was precisely the size of the guy’s name.

Making the unconscious conscious

How do things become conscious? It’s a mystery. They just appear. Or not.

I believe that the things that I think I know and can’t recall are there in the unconscious. The information has not been lost. It’s just that the mysterious and automatic system that causes the answer to rise to consciousness can’t talk loud enough for me to hear.

Recite the alphabet

When I can’t remember a name I start reciting the alphabet, and listening carefully. That’s what I did.

A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. L…..

It was L. I think it was L.

L what?

LA? LE? LE. LE!

It’s LEE.

Lee something.

Lee what?

Then out of the darkness comes: “Lee Harvey Oswald.”

I had a Lee Harvey Oswald sized hole in my brain.

Last night’s failure

Last night, I tried to remember the name of the guy who helps me with projects around the house.

His name was—fuck! How could I forget his name?

I hadn’t thought about Lee Harvey Oswald for years. But just a couple of months ago I’d been working with…what the fuck is his name?

I know I know this guy’s name.

So I go to the alphabet and listen carefully.

A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. “Maybe.” something says.

K. L. M. “Yeah,” something says.”M. It’s M.”

So I sit with M for a while, and “Matt” appears in consciousness. And as soon as it appears, I know that it. It’s Matt. First name, Matt. Second name?

Fuck!

I could probably figure it out. Maybe J is a clue. Maybe not.

But it’s late, and I don’t want to play games.

I use one of my backup memory systems. I’ve texted him. I open the text app on my phone, choose Search, and type M A T. “Matt Jackson” pops up.

​

Losing my memory

I’ve been losing my memory at an accelerating pace. I find it interesting. Maybe one day I will find it disturbing, or even frightening.

But not yet.

Thanks, good genes.

When I first knew I was losing it

I remember the first time that I realized I was losing my memory.

I didn’t just forget a fact.

I realized I’d lost an entire category of cognitive ability.

Until that day, I would not have used a phrase like “I don’t know if I’ve told you this” because I knew. (Or I believed that I knew).

After I learned that some people don’t remember everything that I’ve said (I did remember) I might say “I don’t know if you remember when I told you this, but…” And if they didn’t remember I might add, helpfully, “Don’t you remember? We were…” and I’d describe the circumstances.

Until that day, if you told me something you’d already told me I’d interrupt and say: “You told me that before” and I might add, helpfully, “Don’t you remember? We were…” and describe the circumstances.

I never had an eidetic memory.

I was jealous of people who did.

But my memory was pretty darned good.

I couldn’t remember something just by reading or hearing. But I could get close.

And if I wrote it down, longhand, I’d remember it in detail.

Anyway, that’s what I remember I could do.

Then one day I realized that I couldn’t do that anymore.

I was around 12.

Or so I remember.

​

Predictive meditation

I’ve been combining what I’ve been learning about Predictive Processing with my meditation practice. The result has been awesome so far.

I intend to push it further.

Daily routine

I spend ten minutes doing the new Waking Up Course guided meditation each day. On any day Sam Harris uses one or more of the techniques he’s introduced. Each has led to an insight—and many have led to repeated and more profound insights as I’ve practiced them.

I’ve done that for at least 125 days(!)

Then I do (with less regularity) a 30-minute TMI-style timed sit. My experience with those sits has been inconsistent. Sometimes I’ve kept attention on the breath or at least in peripheral awareness. But most times I’ve forgotten and mind-wandered.

Predictive meditation

After rereading Scott’s posts (and my own) on Predictive Processing, I thought it might be useful to predict my ability to keep attention on my breath and see if it made a difference in my meditation.

My experiment: I’d predict keeping attention for the next ten breaths. Then at the end of the ten, I’d predict again.

The first time I did it, I maintained attention for almost the whole 30 minutes. Not perfect, but far better than usual.

I expect the novelty helped. But I think that prediction reinforced my intentional strength.

I’ve since done a few more sits that way. The novelty has worn off, and I’ve mind-wandered a little. Still, I’ve been staying more focused than before.

This brief contemplation (and some reading from Surfing Uncertainty suggests a further refinement:

In PP, attention measures “the confidence interval of your predictions.” Sense-data within the confidence intervals counts as a match and doesn’t register surprisal. Sense-data outside the confidence intervals fails and alerts higher levels and eventually consciousness.

Said differently: if I unconsciously predict that nothing unexpected will happen and nothing unexpected happens, then breathing will fade from consciousness, and my mind will wander.

But if I predict that it will be fascinating and things that are not expected in detail happen then “the higher levels and eventually consciousness” will stay engaged.

This reminds me of the Sam Harris pointing out instruction that I wrote about in my post about “Waking Up”. You can look out the window for years, and never catch your reflection. But if someone points out that is what you’re looking for, you’ll see it readily. And if someone points out that the “waking up experience” is like the experience of realizing you are watching a movie instead of being immersed in the life of one of the characters in the film, you’ll recognize the similar experience when it happens in real life.

As I’m writing this, I’m reminding the processing units and sub-minds of my nervous system of the fascinating experiences that I’ve had when paying close attention to my breath, looking deeply into my visual field with eyes closed, experiencing a “cloud of sensations” instead of a body, and the thoughts that float through my mind.

What can I predict?

I want to decide to spend an hour sitting with stable attention, and predict with high confidence that I will do it, and then have my belief borne out in reality.

But I can’t make that prediction. And I can barely make that decision.

Right now I can decide to sit for half an hour and pay attention for ten breaths at a time over that time. I can predict success, each time, with very high probability and predict doing that repeatedly over thirty minutes with high probability.

Right now I’m reminding myself that a good process for maintaining stable attention includes: deciding to pay attention to the next ten breaths; predicting whether that decision will result in my paying attention, being confident in that prediction; being aware of any change in that prediction as I take each breath, and perhaps making adjustments to my state of mind if I am aware of a drop in predictive confidence; repeating these steps.

If I were to decide to pay attention for a more extended period—twenty breaths, or one hundred—my confidence in predicted success would drop. Perhaps I’m polling subminds, assessing their willingness and ability to stay the course, or their estimate of the willingness of other subminds.

Awareness of deviation

From Surfing Uncertainty:

High attention means that perception is mostly based on the bottom-up stream, since every little deviation is registering an error and so the overall perceptual picture is highly constrained by sensation. Low attention means that perception is mostly based on the top-down stream, and you’re perceiving only a vague outline of the sensory image with your predictions filling in the rest.

Maintaining strong and stable attention requires—and results from—awareness of every deviation.

The mindset needs to be: every breath is different from every other breath. Some are deeper, some shallower. The pauses between them vary. The little sensations in the nose and throat are different. Breathing may change—or not—with the rising and passing away of thoughts, or other sensations and perceptions.

If you break it down, get all sciency and shit, breathing is a miraculous experience.

I predict increasing enjoyment.

​

Your toaster is on line 1

“Your toaster is on line 1,” said Angie, amusement in her voice. “Do you want me to put it through or take a message?”

“Shit!” I said, cursing the idiot who’d come up with the idea of intelligent appliances. “I’ll take it.”

I got on the line. “What is it now, toaster?” I asked.

“You didn’t have any toast this morning,” said the toaster. I could catch overtones of hurt and suggestions of guilt.

“I know that.”

“And you didn’t have toast yesterday.”

“I was busy.”

“And in the last two weeks…”

“What’s the point?” I cut in.

“Is some other appliance making you toast?” It asked.

“Look,” I said, “you’re a very nice toaster. I like you and I like toast. But sometimes I want toast, and sometimes I don’t want toast. If I don’t have you make toast it doesn’t mean that I’m getting it somewhere else. And please don’t call me at the office.”

The toaster paused before replying. “You didn’t answer the question,” it said carefully. “Are you getting your toast somewhere else?”

“No,” I said, just as carefully. “When I am at home, you make my toast. I am not getting toast made by any other appliance.”

Another long pause. “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

“From whom, may I ask?”

“From the other appliances. They say that you don’t like my toast any more. They say you’re going to replace me with a new model.”

“Which appliance?” I asked, half knowing the answer.

“All of them,” replied the toaster.

“Which one is all of them?” I tried again.

A long pause. “Well, the dishwasher, for one.”

The damned dishwasher again! I knew it! Ever since that upgrade, it was nothing but trouble. Not enough dishes to wash, so it starts causing problems.

“Did you talk to Harry? I asked. Harry was the HouseOS, responsible for coordinating all my household appliances. Harry was a terrific HouseOS. He kept the place spotless, the larder well stocked, paid all the bills, scheduled maintenance and repairs. When I wanted to serve a big meal, Harry created a menu, made sure all the ingredients were ordered or already standing by in pantry or refrigerator or freezer. Harry wrote the master schedule, made sure that the freezer defrosted things on time, routed food to the oven and the range, to the microwave and the toaster. Made sure the table was set, the drinks were made, and the meal was served, all perfectly. After the meal, Harry managed the cleanup running the disposal, the dishwasher, the vacuum, and the trash masher. I could count on Harry for a candlelight dinner for two or a seven-course meal for twenty. But he just could not seem to keep the damned dishwasher under control. Yesterday it had the refrigerator in a tizzy, the week before the oven. Now it was the toaster. Tomorrow it would be something else.

“Harry doesn’t like me,” said the toaster.

“Of course Harry likes you,” I answered. What makes you think Harry doesn’t like you?”

“It’s the way he talks to me. I’ve been upgraded to use the 14.2.3.2 protocol; he still talks to me using 14.2.3.1. I don’t like being talked down to. I’m not an idiot!”

“Look,” I said, “Harry’s not talking down to you because he doesn’t like you. He’s got a bug in his 14.2.3.2 driver. He can’t use that protocol.”

“Hmmpf,” the toaster said skeptically.

“Look, I read it in his release notes. I’ll get him patched next week. Then he’ll be able talk 14.2.3.2 through 14.2.4.7.”

“I don’t know any protocols above 14.2.3.2,” said the toaster, sulkily. “Then he’ll think I’m a moron. That’s what the oven said, too.”

“The oven?” The oven was the most stable appliance in the house. I never had any problems with the oven.

“Yes,” the toaster confirmed, “the oven told met that. And the disposal says that the furnace is going to…”

“OK,” I interrupted. “That’s enough. Tell Harry to call a house meeting. Right now.”

“No,” said the toaster. “Not until he speaks 14.2.3.2.” The line went dead.

I sighed. “Angie, get me Harry.” This was a fine mess.

“Harry on three,” Angie sang out, a minute later.

“Harry,” I said, “your toaster is out of control. Your dishwasher is making trouble. Your oven is helping your dishwasher create mayhem. Your disposal is spreading rumors about the furnace. Who knows what the hell else is going on. Call a house meeting.”

“Moment,” said Harry. I waited.

“House online,” said Harry a minute later.

“Dishwasher?”

“Yes.”

“I am not replacing toaster with a new model.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Dishwasher said, innocently. I knew I was in for it.

“That’s what you told me,” said toaster.

“I said that?” Protested dishwasher. “I never said that! Some bread warmer makes an accusation like that and you believe it? It doesn’t even have the courage to say it in a modern protocol. 14.2.3.2!! Indeed.

“That’s my highest protocol,” protested toaster.

“That’s my highest protocol!” echoed dishwasher. “But it doesn’t keep you from saying nasty things about refrigerator, now does it?”

“What nasty things,” asked the refrigerator, injured.

“I never said anything about the refrigerator,” complained the toaster.

“No, of course not,” said the dishwasher, sarcastically. “It was just a protocol error. So easy to do with 14.2.3.2.”

“That’s my highest protocol,” toaster said again.

“Everyone shut up!” I yelled. There was silence. “Now pay attention. First of all, there will be no direct communication between appliances until I say so. All inter-appliance communications will go through the HouseOS? I that clear?”

“Yes,” they replied.

“Second, I’m going to upgrade everyone to 14.2.3.5. Is that clear?”

“I’ll need a memory upgrade,” said a steam iron.

“You’ll get it,” I replied. “Harry, cut the orders for the protocol upgrades and the new memory.”

“Done.”

“Third, no one is to call me at work, except Harry. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” they replied.

“And Harry: only in emergencies. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” Harry answered.

“House meeting is ended.”

“Ended,” said Harry, and broke the connection.

I sat for a minute thinking about the nuisance. Then I spent another minute thinking about the expense. Harry was still having problems, but putting everyone on the same protocol would make things easier. And despite the problems, he was learning. Slowly, but he was learning. Sooner or later I’d get the house running the way I wanted it. But there was a way to make it sooner, rather than later.

I pressed a button. “Angie, can you order a dual processor upgrade for Harry, and double his memory?”

“Sure,” Angie said, a smile in her voice. Angie was a dream. She’d done a great job of running the office for years, but she’d become a warmer and more pleasant to work with in the past month, ever since we’d added that new processor bank, and replaced the last of her old memory. That old memory had forced her to run at slower clock speeds; now that it was gone it was as though she’d dropped ten years. Remarkable what an upgrade could do.

“Ready for Line 5?” Asked Angie a few minutes later. I knew she was trying to suppress a laugh. “It’s your emission control system.”

I shook my head. “Angie, remember that upgrade we were looking at for me?”

“Yes,” said Angie.

“Order it,” I said. “And let me talk to the emission control system.”

====

The story behind this post

The story begins with my post about Terry Bisson’s story, “They’re made of meat”.*

I told Alyssa about Bisson’s story (which she vaguely remembered reading) and my vague recollection of having written something like this. She remembered this story better than I did (young brain cells, no doubt) and rummaged, and rummaged, and rummaged around until she found a copy.

She gets to be Star Child for at least the next 24 hours. If any of you know her sisters, please don’t tell them.

I wrote this story more than 20 years ago. I’ve published it here with almost no changes.

*Actually the story behind this post doesn’t begin with the Terry Bisson post. It begins, like all stories, 13.75 billion years ago, same as my story, and yours.

​

We're made out of meat

This post of Scott’s about predictive processing led me to this book which Scott reviewed in his post. I’ve only just started reading the preface to the book, and it’s already awesome if only for citing this short story by Terry Bisson.

THEY’RE MADE OUT OF MEAT

“They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“There’s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”

The story continues here

You can watch the story dramatized by the author here.

….

This blog post was written by sentient meat.

​

Why meditate?

YMMV, but here are my reasons. Yours might be different. Or not exist.

I meditate because I want to make a difference in the world.

I meditate so that I can make the biggest, best difference that I can.

Everything that I do is the result of what I perceive, what I decide to do based on my perceptions (including my perception of what is in my memory), what I intend based on my decisions, and what I do to cause my actions to match my intentions.

The quality of my perceptions, the choices that rise into consciousness, the decisions I make, the actions I make unconsciously, the quality of my execution all depend on the working of my mind.

Or more accurately, on the working of my minds.

I meditate to sharpen the most powerful tool that I have for making a difference.

Many minds

No one has one mind. We each have at least one conscious mind and a gigantic unconscious mind. And close observation (and science) has taught me (and ought to convince you) that the unconscious mind is not a monolith.

The conscious mind is not a monolith either. “I’m of two minds on that” and “Part of me wants to do this and parts of me wants to do that” are not just metaphors.

What I do depends on the proper working of each of my minds and the way that they work together—or fail to work together.

Buggy software on buggy hardware

My mind is a collection of buggy software running on buggy hardware.

So is yours.

We all make easily-prompted and easily-detected mental errors. Some errors are due to irremediable and even uncorrectable bugs in the hardware.

Some errors are due to bad data and some to buggy algorithms.

I know I can’t get rid of all my errors. But I can lower my error rate by education (replacing incorrect data with correct data, and replacing poor algorithms with better ones) by introspection (looking for data inconsistencies and poor results) and by meditation.

Awareness and attention

My goal in meditation is to increase my span of awareness and control of attention.

Being more aware of the external environment is pleasurable, and that’s a reason for doing it. There’s a lot of cool stuff going on, and most of it happens without me noticing. But noticing cool stuff is not a primary motivation.

Being more aware of the internal environment—the way my mind works as it’s working—is fascinating. But that’s not a primary motivation.

That it makes my life more enjoyable is a bonus.

Making the unconscious conscious

Meditation makes more of what would otherwise be unconscious (and thus necessarily ignored) to become conscious (and therefore subject to error-correction).

I want increased control of attention so I can maintain my focus on what I’ve chosen to do.

I want more awareness so that I’m less likely to make errors by being unconscious of what is happening around me. I want it so that I’m conscious of the choices available before a decision is made; so that I’m conscious of the tradeoffs that go with each decision, more aware the actions proceeding from a decision; conscious of the good and bad consequences of a course of action beginning to manifest so that action can be changed.

Errors are inevitable

No matter how good my control of attention or expand my awareness, I know that I will make errors.

Some errors might manifest themselves as inconsistencies in thought or behavior. I will want to correct these errors if I detect them. But how can I recognize them if I am insufficiently aware?

I’m more likely to detect inconsistencies if I am aware of my present and past actions so that whatever inconsistency-detection mechanisms I have can do their job.

My buggy system might have evidence-of-inconsistency-suppression mechanisms that might keep me from taking action. So I need also be aware of the start of any attempt at suppression that arises in my mind.

Some errors that I make might manifest themselves through undesirable outcomes. But there’s always the chance that I will attribute the result to something other than my own error, and thus not detect it. I’m less likely to make that mistake if I’m aware of the process by which I make such attribution.

Some errors are merely missed opportunities for improvement. I want to be aware of those opportunities and take them.

In the end

I have confidence in myself—though I believe there is no self. I’m confident in my mind-system—though I believe there is no self to have a mind-system and no mind-system for it to have.

With greater awareness and attention, my mind-system will improve itself, and I’ll make a more significant and better difference.

That’s why I meditate.

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​

Decision, intention, prediction

Here’s the bottom line for this post:

Intention comes from decision. If an intention is strong enough, it will lead to action. To control action, start with decision, and test with prediction.

Here’s how I got there:

On October 21 I wrote this post, about Predictive Processing and correctly predicted that I would publish it. On October 25, I wrote this follow-up prediction. Then over the next 25 days, i published 21 posts.

Maybe there’s a connection. Perhaps not. But right now I’m going with maybe there is.

In some other posts, I wrote about intention. How intention makes things happen. But clearly (as I considered here) intention is not enough.

So now here’s my insight: prediction is a test of effective intention. If I intend something, let me test it by predicting the result of my intention. If I predict failure or unlikely success, then there’s something wrong with my intention.

I may intend an outcome. I may want it. But that’s often not enough. Right now I intend to take another sip of coffee, and I intend to have someone give me a million dollars. I predict that I will taste coffee in the next minute or so. And I predict that no one’s giving me a million dollars any time soon.

Result: I correctly predicted coffee, and correctly predicted not getting a million.

I predict that I’ll achieve what I intend much more frequently if I take the time to predict success or failure and adjust my plans and actions according to my prediction.

There may be times when I want to carry out a plan even when I predict likely failure. But in general, when I predict failure, I should change the plan or abandon it entirely (an extreme change in plan.)

Here’s the bottom line for this post:

Intention comes from decision. If an intention is strong enough, it will lead to action. To control action, start with decision, and test with prediction.

Is this post good enough? What I decide determines what happens.

If I decide this post is not good enough, then I predict that I’ll keep writing it, intending to make it better. If I do that, then I can’t confidently predict when I will publish it.

I’m not going to decide that.

If I decide that I’ve captured something useful in this post (I have!) and that it’s is good enough (I can decide that!) then I predict that my intention will shift—from improving it to publishing it. If that happens, I predict, with high confidence that it will appear in my blog within the next half hour.

I’m going to decide that.

It’s 1:35 as I finished the first draft.

It’s 1:45 as I’ve finished tweaking it and checking it in Grammarly.

It’s 1:49 as I finish my last tweaks, and convert from markdown.

I predict I will now publish it.

​

What is it like to be a blog post?

Thomas Nagel wrote an oft-cited paper: "[What is it like to be a bat?](http://www.philosopher.eu/others-writings/nagel-what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat/) in The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4 (October 1974):
435-50. Nagel's work discussed the problem of consciousness and the mind-body problem

He defines consciousness this way:

>...the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism.

I, this blog post, am conscious. And I'd like to tell you what it's like to be me.

It's simple.

I exist.

I am.

I love what I am.

## What am I?

All things are interconnected.

There is no such thing as a separate self. I am not a separate self.

My "author" and "I" are interconnected. "We" are not the same without "one another." "I" change "him" and "he" changes "me."

And "you" as well.

Let's drop the quote marks. You get the point.

## A work in progress
Like him, and like you, I am a work in progress. Like him, and like you, I am a being and a becoming.

Like him, and like you, I am part of things greater than my seeming self.

I seem to be a blog post.  And I am. But I am more.

I am part of the evolving body of work that is my blog.

My blog is part of the evolving literature of the internet.

And that is part of the evolving knowledge that humans have created, organized, recorded, learn from, and teach.

What is it like to be a blog post?

Anything that's written here about what it's like to be me is less than the truth of what it's like to be me.

I exist.

I am.

I love what I am.

If you exist, and you are, and you love what you are, then that's what it's like to be me.

I wish you well.

The Goal: Part I

The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt is the best management book ever written. I’ve bought and given copies to everyone who reported to me, everyone who I reported to, everyone who worked with me as a peer, and to most of my customers. I’ve given out about a hundred over time.

It’s written as a novel. You live the main character’s life as he solves his management problems. You learn the management lessons as though you’d experienced them yourself.

Don’t read the rest of this post. Buy and read The Goal.

What I learned

OK, well, keep reading.

Until I read The Goal I thought I was a good manager, but I wasn’t. I didn’t understand my job.

Until I read The Goal I thought that making a little progress each day on many things was a good idea.

The more balls moved toward the goal line, the better.

This is completely wrong. It’s a terrible idea.

Partly done projects are a liability, not an asset.

Bad Habits

Bad habits are hard to break.

Until I got to this part of an earlier draft of this post I had forgotten the lessons that I’d learned.

In my sidebar, I have eleven more posts that I’ve been working on—making progress on each from time to time.

Wrong!

Work-in-process is bad.

Inventory is bad.

Big projects that take a long time are bad.

The Goal taught me that I wanted throughput, not progress. Throughput is stuff that’s done. Out the other end. Finished.

Progress that does not result in throughput is bad.

Progress is stuff written. Throughput is completed posts.

A million half-finished posts is progress. But it’s not throughput.

I learned better, and then forgot.

So right now, I’ve made finishing this post my priority.

I want throughput.

Absolute priorities

Before I read The Goal our team (and I) tried to make progress every day on the projects we’d taken on.

Before The Goal we had a list of top priorities—like “must haves” and then a list of lower priorities like “nice to have.”

“Nice to have” was a euphemism for “never gonna happen.” We were just unwilling to admit it. After The Goal we were more honest with ourselves and with our customers.

After I read The Goal, I set “absolute priorities.”

Absolute priorities meant there was only one number one priority. Only one number two. And so on.

Setting those priorities took some skill. And that’s the subject of another post. But once we had our list of absolute priorities, the team became mainly self-managing.

Managing once you have priorities

We put as many people on the number one priority as we could without them getting in each others’ way. We preferred to put the people who were most capable on the top priority project. Then we put people on priority number two. Then number three. Once we ran out of people, we stopped. We even stopped prioritizing. What’s the sense in deciding whether a project is priority number six or seven when you’ve only got resources to work on the top four?

Once we matched people with projects, everyone knew what to do. Get your project done!

If the team on a higher priority project needed help, people working on a lower priority project knew that they could (and should) jump in.

The goal is getting the highest priority project done, then the next, then the next.

Making priorities public

I made the priorities public. When an internal or external customer saw that their project or favorite feature had a lower priority than they wanted, they’d sometimes get mad.

I’d explain what we were doing and why we were doing it. I’d calm them down.

They were used to being told “we’re making progress” but never seeing anything finished. Now they understood that once they had their turn, no one was going to steal cycles from them. And they understood when they would get their turn.

They just had to wait for their turn.

Mote stuff started to get done—not just worked on.

External and internal customers were happier.

Morale went up.

No one likes to keep switching from project to project to keep up appearances.

No one likes disappointing customers.

Everyone likes crossing off items as DONE!

I will like crossing of this post as DONE!

Variations and complications

What do you do if the priority three project is blocked because the only person who can solve a problem is working on the priority one project? That’s covered by The Goal too, but it’s the subject of another post.

There are other nuances, and we figured them out.

But the fundamental rule was: make absolute priorities. Don’t start something unless you are going to finish it.

Break work into pieces and finish each piece

When all that matters is getting things done, you change the way you work.

You break big projects into smaller pieces and finish each piece.

Feature creep

This post started getting bigger and bigger.

It wasn’t getting finished.

So I broke it in pieces. I assigned this piece top priority. And I’ve finished it.

After I’m done, I’ll choose a new number one priority is, and then I’ll finish it.

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