“The ONE thing I didn’t want to happen… is happening!”

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Deb Cote

Do you have an albatross? That task you don’t want to do, conversation you don’t want to have, meeting you don’t want to run? How do you handle it? Grab it by the horns, ask someone else to do it, or just avoid it altogether?

Let me digress…

In June, my husband and I traveled with friends for two weeks in France: Paris > Giverny > Rouen > Honfleur > Bayeaux > Normandy > Mont-Saint-Michel > Amboise > Loire Valley > Nice > Monaco

After powering through four days in Paris on our feet, my husband and one of our friends left the hotel and returned with our rented Renault Trafic Combi.

Our Renault Trafic Combi

Our Renault Trafic Combi

You’d think we were traveling with 8+ people, since the Combi is a 9-passenger van. No, our party totaled five. But two of those five pack like they’re crossing the Atlantic on a 1920s ocean liner. One of them showed up in my driveway for a 4-day weekend to Nantucket with a steamer trunk; she likes “options”. Another brings an extra suitcase because he refuses to repeat outfits in his selfies and needs to buy large, heavy souvenirs.
So immediately after renting a 7-passenger van online a few weeks before departure, I panicked and changed it to a 9-passenger bus.

I texted everyone, asking if the size was OK even if it wasn’t as nice as the smaller van.
“Yes, better to have enough room,” they all said.
I asked if the difference in price was OK.
“It’s nothing when divided by five of us,” they all reasoned.
I asked who wanted to be the official driver.
“Not it,” four of us echoed.

So, my husband was elected designated driver. In France, the steering wheel is on the left side of the car. They drive on the right side of the road. What’s the problem?

My husband championed through finding the hidden rental car location, accepted the four pages of things the agent explained were wrong with the van – “Bonne chance!” (“Good luck!”), figured out the GPS directions even when it pronounced things like the “Chaaamps EL-ISS-esss”, maneuvered his way out of an underground garage we had no business pulling into, snaked our way through 2-lane switchback roads wide enough for one Smart car (did I mention it was a manual shift, diesel?), and shared the road with French drivers who do not believe rules or laws are needed.

He was fine with all of this. What he wasn’t fine with was our route out of Paris. Two days before we left the city, we visited the Arc de Triomphe. We marveled at the memorial and climbed 200+ steps to the top, where the views were incredible and the cars below us looked like hundreds of pie pieces moving around a Trivial Pursuit board. It was there that my husband told me we would not be driving around that to exit the City of Lights (aka the City of Crazy Drivers).

We climbed into the van (the luggage fit!), the GPS instructed us where to go, and we tried to stay away from the Champs-Élysées and its landmark arc based on some careful map studying the night before. But as luck would have it, traffic and the GPS snuck us around some buildings, and suddenly, we were on the Champs-Élysées heading for the mother of all rotaries.
Or roundabouts as they call them over there.

Approaching the Arc de Triomphe

Approaching the Arc de Triomphe

“The ONE thing I didn’t want to happen… is happening!” he moaned.

I didn’t see the big deal. It’s a rotary. It’s meant to be driven around. Hundreds if not thousands of vehicles go around it every day. But it was his albatross. I had to be empathetic and supportive.
Naturally I whipped out my iPhone and started recording.

So I won’t win Wife of the Year. Cars were whipping by. Pedestrian tourists risked their lives. A motorcycle cut off a Porsche which stopped directly in front of us and we slammed to a halt. We had four back seat drivers, simultaneously trying to help while at the same time laughing, praying, providing commentary, and waving to the camera.

My husband started breaking down his mountain. “We’re bigger than everyone else on the road. Looks like we go straight – in at 6, around, and out at noon. This thing has so many dings, scratches, and missing pieces, what’s one more?”

We obviously made it through, unscathed even. And it turned out to be one of the most memorable stories of the trip.

Sometimes we make that albatross bigger than it is. Try grabbing the wheel and driving through your own Arc de Triomphe!

Posted in Accomplishments, Motivation | Comments Off on “The ONE thing I didn’t want to happen… is happening!”

My Virtual Days at the Beach

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Sandie Kimball

I haven’t had enough vacation this summer. My week on the Cape just whetted my appetite for sunshine, sand, and seashells. But I also have a craving for food, housing, and a meaningful purpose in life. I don’t know of a better way of obtaining those things than my job at Dana-Farber, on the best team in the world. So I’ve had to find creative ways to juggle the two and to make compromises where necessary.

For instance, this weekend was the perfect beach weekend. But we had other plans that did not include the beach. So as I often do, I started my weekend by taking a turn through my “Woodland Walk”. This is a path through the wooded area in our backyard that started as a tangle of jewelweed and poison ivy, and which my husband cleared a few years ago. Over the years we have cut out a winding path, covered it with wood chips, put rocks around the edges, and cultivated native woodland plants. The path takes all of one minute to circumnavigate, but when I’m in there I feel like I’m in another world. Sometimes I’ll take a sandwich out to the little bench there and listen to the birds.

New Picture 

On nights when I have trouble falling asleep, I envision myself walking that path, one step at a time, passing the leaf pile and the tree trunk overturned during Hurricane Irene. I stop at the sculpture created from “found objects” I’ve dug up over the years—a rusty door handle, an ancient saw blade, a pair of child’s suspenders adorned with Sesame Street characters. I’m usually asleep before I’ve reached the end of the path.

Another way I extend my beach vacations is to spend time with the seashells we’ve collected. I clean and polish them with mineral oil and create wreaths, picture frames, and displays while listening to the music on my MP3 player that I take with me to the beach when collecting the shells. It’s remarkable how it takes me back to those special locations and happy times.

New Picture (1)These virtual vacations still don’t take the place of actual vacations, but I don’t underestimate their value.

I had a little help with this from a presentation on “Moving from Stress to Resilience” at our monthly Brown Bag series in June. A representative from the Partners Employee Assistance Program offered tips on relaxation and mindfulness practices that you can incorporate into the middle of the work day. A walk to the Dana Building from my desk at Overland Street can become an exercise in meditation. Working on a status report, while not exactly a day at the beach, can be more pleasant when listening to “beachy” music on headphones. Taking a few deep breaths and running my fingers through the dish of kitten paw shells that I keep on my desk is a reminder that the natural world and the world of work are not so separate after all.

Posted in Work Life Balance | 2 Comments

Patience

Posted on July 22, 2015 by Meagan Turner

Patience. I sometimes struggle to apply this quality to my daily activities, whether it is project management or dealing with family members. My default personality is to try and solve problems right away. However, sometimes living in discomfort without making changes may be exactly what is needed.

I have a project that is having some difficulty in the design phase. The team is building and configuring the system to match the requirements. However, the system isn’t cooperating! We’ve found an issue that has huge implications within the business. So, what do we do? My inclination is to quickly find a solution, but I know the team should properly plan and discuss the options, weighing each one. Isn’t a quick resolution also important? Taking more time has consequences; other items on the critical path will be delayed and our project will be late (or worse). But, forcing a resolution could have even bigger consequences that reach beyond the project.

Patience is a quality found in great leaders. Managing and leading teams requires a healthy dose of patience and having the experience to know when to apply it. Project teams are complex. They contain team members with different views, communication styles, terminology, skills, and patience levels. In the context of problem resolution, it is important to find a balance between quick resolution and thoughtful deliberation. Helping the team find that balance is the role of a good leader.

In this particular scenario, giving the team the space they need to discuss and resolve the issue is the right thing to do. After some negotiations and redesign, they actually may come up with a resolution that serves the business more effectively. Even if that means that the current project is cancelled. In this particular case, the quality of the resolution is more important than the project timeline.

Am I the only one who struggles with applying patience to high stress situations? No. Are my techniques or scenarios unique? Probably not. This was a clear teaching moment for me and I wanted to share in case it can help you with your daily work.

Posted in Communication, Team | 1 Comment

How I spent my summer vacation

Posted on July 10, 2015 by admin

I cleared it with my manager to take the first two weeks of July off and began researching airfares to Eureka, CA and Portland, OR. I had had several planning discussions with my sister (in CA) and my daughter (in OR) and was really getting excited about my left coast swing. I hadn’t hugged my daughter in six months and hadn’t seen my sister in six years!

I finally accepted that airfares weren’t magically going to drop, so I developed an itinerary and before pulling the trigger, I checked to make sure the dates still worked.

My daughter – “Have you purchased your tickets yet?”

Me – “No. Why?”   

“Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I have an opportunity to go hiking with friends in Peru.”

peru2

Enter stage right – Kenny. Well, actually very far right from across the pond, from Belgium! She met him at a MySQL conference in San Diego, and they have been hiking all over the place ever since – from Portland, OR to Vancouver, CA. Through FaceTime, they have determined:

  • They both have lists of about 30 characteristics and qualities for the ideal partner. They can check off most of the items on their lists.
  • If they can get through two weeks of hiking in South America and still like each other, then she will look at joining him in Belgium
  • If they can get through three months of living together, then she will sell her house in Portland and move to Belgium

This is frightening to me on so many levels, but she is a 38-year-old grown woman and can make her own decisions. I am seriously thinking about gently initiating a risk planning session with her. I’ll also see if she has any lessons learned from her failed marriage.

I quickly turned to salvaging my vacation and began researching airfares again, this time California only, spending more time with my sister. Of course, I called to confirm with her and here is how it went –

My sister – “Have you booked your flight?”

Me – “No. Why?” It turns out that something came up and she will be unable to make time for me in the month of July. Northern California.

cal

 I guess you could call it a positive lesson learned – always check before purchasing tickets to make sure your hosts can still make time for you. Honestly, I never thought this would happen and I didn’t have a backup plan. After such a relentless winter, and the intense sprint to the Epic go-live, I was aching for some time off. So I settled on a staycation and here is how it went down…

  • Got an awesome massage
  • Visited my friend on the Cape (great food, drinks, walks on the beach)
  • Played golf
  • Mulched (a great workout)
  • Watched movies
  • Mulched (felt stronger as the week went on)
  • Played golf
  • Mulched (I had ordered 6 cubic yards, but only needed 4! Oy vey!)
  • Helped with funeral service at my church (I was the only one around to help)
  • Went to pool party with Jamaican food including red snapper that had been Fed-Ex’d next day (from catch to table)
  • Bought blowup swimming pool
  • Went to Cape again, this time with family
  • Had lobster and steamers; great fireworks on the beach
  • Played golf

I feel strong from all the physical work and play, my gardens look beautiful, and I avoided a costly lesson learned. It was a great week!

P.S. Scenes from my staycation . . .

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IMG_1507

IMG_1510

Posted in Lessons Learned, Risk Management, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Post-Project Close: Deflate Gate 2.0?

Posted on June 25, 2015 by Sandra Cadogan-Beebe

pipeline

Months – years for some participants – of planning, learning, changing, doing. We did it! We successfully went live just about a month ago. Yes there’s still work to do and some kinks to iron out, but WE DID IT! The logo’d pencils handed out last year on Yawkey 3 foreshadowed the unavoidable truth, “It’s going to be EPIC!”

 
As an Epic Project Team Lead for one of the work streams, I bore witness to so much of the intensity, focus, discipline, commitment, and tenacity brought by so many DFCI resources; the energy and effort only increased as we neared and entered the anticipated cutover, go-live, and stabilization phases.

 
The only visualization I can make to describe this in picture form is one of those fifty-foot waves die-hard surfers live for on the Oahu North Shore each February. For some of us, this Epic wave could be the biggest wave of our work lives, but we together brought the right amount of patience, skill, adrenaline, and fearlessness to allow us to successfully hang ten and ride this Epic Banzai Pipeline straight to the shore line!

 
Executing the Epic Technical Dress Rehearsal required a lot of that adrenaline and energy to effectively complete on time, and it was just one small piece of the Epic implementation puzzle. The team, as did all of the other work-streams, did a great job of rolling up sleeves and getting the job done, often with measurable cost and sacrifice, some personal. It’s hard to find anyone at DFCI who didn’t sacrifice time with friends or family to make this Epic project a huge success. Many of our co-workers not working directly on the Epic project picked up a ton of slack, as did our families when we were absent from home and working late more often than not. Collectively, we all did whatever was needed to make this Epic project a success.

 
Along with sacrifice came reward, too. Projects are like that, usually resulting in positive unintended and unanticipated results. If we’ve learned Epic, we’ve learned new skills and acquired new knowledge. New work teams, if only temporarily, were formed from a collection of Dana-Farber, Partners, and consulting pools. We created new friendships, new working relationships and likely lots of memories to look back on long after Epic has become second nature to all of us. It’s been hard but it’s something to be quite proud of.

 
Things have begun to quiet down. Now what? The work-day hours needed to complete critical tasks have greatly tapered, teams are disbanding and resources offloading, evenings and weekends are being reclaimed, the dog recognizes me again, the project adrenaline has worn off.

 
I feel great about the project’s outcome to date, but I can’t believe it. I feel a little deflated, maybe even a little empty. I’m not living and breathing Epic anymore. It’s a weird blend of triumph and sadness. It’s not like I just sent my first-born off to college, or maybe it is a little similar? What???

 
Ending an intense project, even a successful project, is a little like running into a wall at 100 mph. The activity and energy needed to get to go-live is super-human and in a crescendo moment…relative quiet.

 

How does one move on past “done,” now that one of your primary driving forces is over, and get through post-project deflation?

 
1. Celebrate the achievement…then rest up and re-inflate!

 
2. Debrief, reflect on what went well and what didn’t; lessons learned are great to take with you for the next big project that comes along. Life is full of them!
3. Once re-inflated and rested up, ask yourself “what’s next?” and get inspired for success yet again!
4. Once you know “what’s next,” give yourself the right amount of time to plan the new project, a great way to start off on the right foot; planning is a PM’s must-have in his or her tool kit!
5. Keep in touch with a few of those great new friends you’ve made during this Epic project. You’ve probably got a lot of good war stories to share for some time to come!

 

 

Posted in Accomplishments, Lessons Learned, Team, Work Life Balance | 2 Comments

The 10,000 Hour Rule – Revisited

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Ron Munroe

Three years ago, I blogged about the “10,000 Hour Rule” popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers”. The theory says that becoming an expert in any complex skill requires 10,000 hours of practice, or about 10 years at 20 hours per week. In that blog, I mentioned Dan McLaughlin, who in 2010 decided to test the 10,000 hour rule in a big way – by leaving his job as a photographer and dedicating 10,000 hours over six years to learn to golf well enough to do it professionally.

I liked the idea of the 10,000 hour rule because it meant that we’re largely in control of our own destiny; our level of skill correlates to our level of dedication over time.

I remained curious whether Dan would be able to become a professional golfer just by deciding to do it and putting in the time. This week, I checked his progress three years later. While I was at it, I checked the web for more recent articles on the 10,000 hour rule.

Since Gladwell wrote his book, there appear to have been more detractors than proponents of the 10,000 hour theory. Many view it as too simplistic because other factors are important – raw talent, the age a person starts an activity, the quality of practice sessions. A Princeton study researched the value of practice across a number of fields and found it accounted for a relatively small difference in performance (1-26%). Also, 10,000 hours was not found to be a magic number. Among chess players recently studied, the amount of practice needed to achieve master status varied from 728 hours to 16,120 hours. This means one player needed 22 times more practice than another to become a master! So while all agree that practice improves performance, it is not the dominant factor, nor is there a magic number of hours.

Ok, that’s what some studies say. How is the aspiring professional golfer’s test of the 10,000 hour rule? Since 2010, he has kept his singular focus and has continued to practice golf almost full time every week. He has transformed from an unremarkable golfer to being in the top 1% of golfers in the world with a handicap around 4. That is amazing progress. To me, his seems to have been a successful test of the rule. However, his goal has been to become a professional golfer and that requires that he improve even further. So whether he succeeds remains to be seen. He now estimates that he will not finish 10,000 hours of practice until 2018 because maintaining a pace of 36 hours of golf a week turned out to be unrealistic. While he has enjoyed his challenge and kept his good humor, he now estimates his chances of playing in the PGA tour as about 25%.

I look forward to seeing how Dan’s journey ends.

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What Would Churchill Do

Posted on May 26, 2015 by David Pesta

Winston Churchill has been on my mind lately, for a funny reason I’ll explain at the end of this post. The Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II, Winston Churchill, is widely regarded as the most important leader of the past hundred years, if not ever. He galvanized his nation against a dreadful military onslaught and forged an effective global coalition that eventually defeated the most villainous regime in history.  

Even to this day, there is a magnetism to Churchill as a leader, an intellectual, and a personality. He brought many tools to bear in his career: intelligence, bravery, curiosity, and insight to name a few. But he is most well-known and loved for skills as a communicator. As both a writer and orator, Churchill captivated those who heard his words. President Kennedy, another gifted speaker, said of him, “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

Considering his resume, it seems undeniable that the wisdom of such a person would be valuable in this age, in any age. So when Mr. Churchill became an unlikely topic of discussion a few weeks ago, I thought some of his speeches and quotes would make for inspiring bedtime reading. Among my subsequent impressions is how successful Churchill might have been in today’s business world as an executive, a project manager, or even (god help us) a trainer. Here are just a few examples of what I mean:

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“Like other systems in decay, the Roman Empire continued to function for several generations after its vitality was sapped.”

Churchill studied history and keenly applied it to modern politics. But here he also functions as a systems analyst, I believe. He makes a distinction between the appearance of baseline functionality and viable effectiveness in the future. As a project sponsor, he makes a strong argument for proactive change management. It occurs to me that Churchill would see the importance of us moving to Epic. Like Rome, we could stumble along as is, getting by with the status quo. But to thrive well into the future, systems must evolve.

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“The dangers we face are still enormous, but so are our advantages and resources. I recount them because the people have a right to know that there are solid grounds for the confidence which we feel, and that we have good reason to believe ourselves capable, as I said in a very dark hour two months ago, of continuing the war ‘if necessary alone, if necessary for years’.”

I don’t have a PMP, but I think Churchill could be a project manager. Here, he describes to his stakeholders the current project state and sets a timeline. With determined confidence, he conveys a realistic appraisal of the situation. Engaged in resource management, he knows full well that he needs more than what he has. But still Churchill knows he must make the best of the resources available.

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 “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.“

Again as a project manager, Churchill sees the world situation realistically, for what it is, urging action forward. He knows that appeasement and inactivity for the sake of comfort has a dire cost. Project progress must take precedent above all such comforts to avoid negative consequences. He shares this vision with his stakeholders in a commanding yet eloquent way.

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“Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”

Churchill keeps the project team and stakeholders focused on the tasks that lie ahead. He effectively squelches anyone inclined to play the blame game for the current problems they have to overcome.

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“I love learning but I hate being taught.”

I think Churchill could have been a trainer and an excellent one at that. Within his own preferred learning style, he sees education is more than just cramming knowledge into someone’s head. 

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There are many other fascinating pearls of wisdom Churchill has to offer us. This exploration could easily become someone’s doctoral thesis. But for now I will end with this simple 1-liner that I think captures Churchill’s true essence. An  editorial ran in May 1945 in The Times of London suggesting that Churchill, having won the war, should now retire gracefully instead of running for reelection in July 1945. In response, Churchill said:

“Mr. Editor, I leave when the pub closes.”

Clearly, Mr. Churchill sees there is more work to be done after go-live. He knows a stabilization period is needed and it’s likely to be every bit as messy as the war. At the very least, Britain needs a Lessons Learned session. And what better place to do Lessons Learned than a British pub.

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And how did this whole line of thought come about? Two weeks ago, we were walking our pug-dog in the park. An older lady came up to us to say hi to him. She was old enough that she might have been a child during the war. After complimenting Colby on how handsome he looked, she said, “He looks just like Mr. Churchill.” I guess I can see the resemblance:

 

 Churchill 1Colby 1

 

Posted in Communication, Learning, Motivation, Planning, Requirements, Time Management, Uncategorized | Comments Off on What Would Churchill Do

My Sister is Weird

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Deb Cote

My sister looks at the world through a different lens than most. After spending time with her last month, I was reminded of her… quirkiness. She flew in from Washington, DC, and we took my mother away to an inn and spa for the weekend to celebrate my mother’s birthday.

Thanks to Boston traffic, the drive took twice as long as it should, so I got to hear twice as many comments and questions from the back seat, without much pause in between. “I write my taxes out long-hand.” “We can eat lunch in our robes after the spa! I saw it on the web site.” “When you were in Colorado, did you smoke pot?” “Why would anyone play the lottery? Winning just causes problems.” “I invented writing in the sand and taking a picture of it. Now everyone is copying me.” “We don’t need wine.” Wait, what?! “How can you not like lobster?” “Are you hungry? I have half a banana,” as she hands me a partially peeled banana from breakfast 6 hours earlier. Who eats half a banana? And then saves it?

When we arrived, I pulled into a small town common with local businesses. She was so in awe, you would have thought she was 6 and we just entered Santa’s Workshop. “Look, there’s a guy with a pizza!” I looked, expecting the pizza to be 10-feet in diameter or balanced on the top of his head. Nope, just a guy carrying a pizza.

My sister, a couple years older than me, has never sworn or done anything remotely close to illegal. My whole life, I’ve heard, “You’re so BAAAAAD.” (I’m really not.) She says she gets too much vacation time; it should be scaled back. Really?! Every restaurant portion “is too big,” yet I’ve never seen her not finish her meal or share my dessert that she is “too stuffed to eat.” She goes to dinner hours before my 72-year old mother ever would. When she texts me, she includes as many Emojis in one message as humanly possible. She still uses a Windows 95 PC at home.

Not to alarm you, but she works for the government and is in charge of billions of dollars.

Would she be someone I would have chosen as a friend? Not likely. But she’s family. So we keep in touch, visit, and occasionally go away together. I’m reminded of work relationships. Some colleagues are people who you would choose as friends, and maybe even are. Others are not but you work together, so you need to communicate, attend meetings together, and collaborate on projects.

The first step in doing that successfully is realizing that normal is just a perceived standard deviation from yourself. We all think we are the measure of normalcy. I’m sure my sister thinks I’m weird. (I’m not.) Nor is anyone we work with. We are all just unique. I love how much DFCI embraces diversity. If everyone was like me, how boring would that be? I learn from others, and hopefully they learn from me. Others make me laugh and smile, and hopefully I do the same for them. I am in awe and inspired by others, and hopefully I spark something in others, too.

Get to know a little bit about your colleagues. I guarantee you’ll find something about their life interesting that may enrich your own. My sister is not weird. We are different people, but I appreciate her honesty, her intellect, and the child-like innocence through which she experiences life. I may try it myself. But with a glass of red wine.

Posted in Team | 1 Comment

Death, Taxes, and Childbirth

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Sandie Kimball

“Death, taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them.” Gone With the Wind.

I haven’t experienced death (yet) or childbirth (won’t happen), but like all of us, I have experienced taxes. Every year we receive a bright orange announcement in January from our accountant, setting an appointment date and reminding us of all the stuff we need to bring. The last line always says: “Let us know if this time is not convenient for you. Otherwise, we will see you then.”

I’m with Scarlett O’Hara: no time is convenient to talk about taxes. Every year I’m shuffling through forms and receipts the night before our appointment, even though I’ve known about it for months and have a folder in my filing cabinet earmarked for “Current Year’s Taxes”. And every year, our accountant asks us if we have purchased any new office equipment or installed any energy-saving devices in our house—none of which I have kept track of.

Still, it helps to have a date after which I know I won’t need to worry about taxes for another few months–which brings me to the topic for this post: Planning. Planning is about determining how you’re going to get to a goal, whether it be for a project at work or for a personal goal, like achieving a healthier lifestyle or preparing for life’s predictable events—like death, taxes, and childbirth! (OK, so maybe death is not a goal, but planning for how your worldly goods will be distributed after you’re gone is.)

Planning for projects at work is made easier by the many tools we have available to us at DFCI through the Project Management Methodology website. Creating and maintaining the documents that are required for a project is like setting up dominoes in an intricate pattern, anticipating the satisfaction I will experience when I knock over the first one. An hour or two spent on a project management planning document is time well spent because this usually saves me the heartache of having to stop in the middle, pick up the pieces, and start all over again, due to questions I didn’t ask and assumptions I didn’t double-check up front.

Planning for the personal stuff hasn’t been as easy for me. There’s never a convenient time to give up caffeine, start a new exercise routine, or even go on vacation. All of these things require planning.

For example, my doctor said I should consider giving up coffee (“taking a break for an undetermined amount of time, then thinking of the occasional coffee as a treat” is the way he put it). I concluded that he obviously didn’t understand the mind of a true coffee lover, but I knew he was right. So after a 40+ year love affair with my favorite beverage, I just quit cold turkey. After the first day or two of blinding headaches, I realized I probably could have saved myself some suffering by tapering off over a few days, replacing the caffeinated drinks gradually with different coffee “substitutes” until I was caffeine-free (but still grieving, of course). 

I ran a 5K a couple of years ago at my college reunion with no training, just to save face with my friends—and could barely walk for two days afterward! Now I’m planning to do one of those “Couch Potato to 5K” programs—a much better way to achieve my fitness goal.

Gretchen Rubin, in “The Happiness Project”, talks about setting “monthly happiness goals”. Who would think about setting goals for being happy? But that is pretty much why planning is important. If I don’t plan my vacations now, the good places I like to stay will all be taken and plane fares will be astronomically expensive. And how can I be happy knowing I could have had twice the money to spend if I hadn’t spent so much on plane tickets?

So I guess I’d better grab one of those cottages today—even though now is not a convenient time to call. Why do I always think of these things when I’m at work?

Posted in Motivation, Planning | Comments Off on Death, Taxes, and Childbirth

Decision Fatigue

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Meagan Turner

I recently listened to a Radio Lab podcast called ‘Choices’. The focus of the discussion was trying to understand how we make certain decisions in life, but also what can influence those decisions. The idea that decisions can be influenced doesn’t seem all that spectacular.  When you consider how many decisions we make daily, it’s not surprising that we get tired and the quality of our decisions drops.

The podcast recounts an experiment that shows how facing multiple decisions can affect our choices. In the experiment, two groups of participants are asked to memorize a set of numbers, then walk down the hall and recall those numbers. One group is asked to memorize two numbers, the other seven. They both leave the room and walk down the hall to recall the numbers, but are interrupted and asked if they’d like to have a snack as a thank you for participating in the study. The snack options are a healthy fruit salad and a big, not-so-healthy slice of chocolate cake. It turns out that the participants who only had two numbers to memorize chose the fruit whereas the ones with seven numbers were more likely to choose the cake. The researchers realized over time that willpower, problem-solving, and concentration all use the same part of the brain, and these cognitive resources are scarce.

In a recent Vanity Fair interview, President Obama shares that he has been influenced by research showing that the ability to make good decisions was like physical energy: it needs to be conserved during the course of each day. “You need to focus your decision-making energy,” he said. “You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.” As a result, he has sought to remove some decisions from his life. He wears only grey and blue suits. He alternates his morning workouts between cardio and weights. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

Steve Jobs and other business leaders have been said to make similar life adjustments. If you look at your daily morning routine and count the number of decisions made before coffee, you can see how you may not have as much brain power later in the afternoon. Perhaps that is why routines exist, to lessen the stress of the endless decisions. I don’t have to choose what to wear each morning, because I choose the night before. I don’t decide how I’m going to get to work, because I take the same route every day. More choice is not a bad thing to have, but we need to be mindful of our cognitive resources. When we use these resources in unproductive ways, we have less in the mental tank for the big problems or decisions.

I thought about how to apply this practice at work. There is no doubt that our days are filled with a myriad of tasks and decisions. What can we do to make things easier? My department has a library of templates and a detailed methodology that help the overall management of projects. When I start a new project, I know what is expected as a part of the methodology, which helps pare down the number of decisions I need to make.

Three key items that I found helpful when reading about the decision fatigue topic:

  • Don’t exhaust yourself with small choices. Save your decision-making energy for what matters.
  • Try to understand the motivation behind the decisions made.
  • Recognize when you’re fatigued and avoid making decisions (if possible) at that time.

What do you do to reduce the amount of unneeded decisions, saving that cognitive power for things that really matter? If nothing, what *could* you do?

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