Pattern 1: Re-Entry
A tricky problem for NASA is the problem of returning critical resources, human beings, to the earth's surface. In life, a person's effectiveness can be measured by how they are prepared to return to to a production routine.
Resistance and Re-Entry
Date Created: 4/23/2020
Date Updated 5/13/2020
Getting back into work work, e.g., not recreation or gaming, is hard.
- I often have the urge to do something else.
- I am easily distracted.
- My mind hatches reasons that the urges and distractions require immediate attention.
An effective way to control re-entry is as follows:
- Backlogging. I update a list of everything I need to get done.
- Review tasks. Prioritize the upcoming tasks in order of how soon you want them.
- I allocate time for the next work period, like a day. I decide which tasks will be completed in that day.
- I complete as many tasks as possible.
- I agree not to expand the scope of tasks beyond what I had originally intended. I trust myself to decide what work is outside what I intended.
- Anything new, goes on the backlog.
- If I work on an unplanned task, that's okay, and I agree to throw out my plan for the day. I build a new plan for the next day. That's not to say I am making any judgements, it's just to say that replanning a partial day is less efficient than planning as I go.
- At the end of the day, I review the tasks completed. How did it go? Did I get the result I expected from each item?
- How many tasks was I able to complete? That is not meant as a judgement or basis for critcism, but as an observation of how fast I am going in comparison to how fast I planned to be going. This observation informs how fast I can plan go, the following day.
Sources:
- Agile (Scrum) Methodology
Patterns for Exploration:
- Using a Point System to Limit Daily Allocations
- Dynamic Attenuation
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©2020 John Meyer