The Nonlinear Library LW - Never Drop A Ball by Screwtape
Nov 24, 2023
09:22
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Never Drop A Ball, published by Screwtape on November 24, 2023 on LessWrong.
Previously I talked about the skill of doing things One Day Sooner. Today I'm going to talk about a different way of working which is in some ways its opposite. The Sazen for this approach is "Never Drop A Ball." I was exposed to this approach in my teens, though I didn't grasp it on an intuitive, fluid level until I was midway through university.
It's the method of work I've been in most often for the last year or so, and while it's not the way to get things done that I most enjoy, it does have some benefits. Never Drop A Ball has some downsides in use, with the main issue being fairly predictable from the phrase "reliably doing the bare minimum." For my own case, the part I like the least is that I don't feel proud of most of the output.
It works something like this: make a list of the things that actually, really, no fooling needs to happen, and then take multiple routes to ensure that those things happen.
What does it look like?
In grade school, I would sometimes get confused by how repetitive teachers got on field trips. "Is everyone here?" they would ask again and again. "Line up neatly as you go into the next room," they'd call, and then count us as we walked by. When I was older and sometimes responsible for shepherding kids myself, I began to realize the wisdom of my elders on this point.
You have many goals when guiding a bunch of ten-year olds through a wilderness hike. First among these goals is not to lose any kids. If you counted fifteen when you started the hike, you really really want there to be fifteen kids when you get to the end of the hike. Perhaps in theory you might be willing to grant that filling the children with the joys and wonders of the natural world is worth a tiny bit more risk to them! That's the reason for the hike after all. This argument will do little to help you in the event you can only count to fourteen kids at the end.
You will observe people attempting to never drop a ball constantly comparing against very specific rubrics. Convergent pressures create check lists and todo lists. No task is allowed to be added to the plate without a written (preferably digitalized and timestamped!) reminded of it. Never dropping a ball wants redundancy, and when it can get extra resources those resources are spent quadruple checking things or getting to the same list marginally faster. From the outside, this can look like spending more time and people and money being spent to change nothing except maybe complaints become a little less frequent.
I have worked adjacent to organizations that were constantly dropping the ball. I have talked to them, they'd say a task was very important, and then a month later I'd realize I hadn't heard anything more about it and when I talked to them again they'd slap their forehead and go "oh, right, I forgot!" When I asked them how they forgot, they'd shrug and gesture to piles of paper on their desk. "So much to do. You know how it is." When I asked if the task was in that stack of paper, I'd be told they weren't really sure, maybe it was.
Surgical checklists reportedly save lives by reminding doctors to do things like wash their hands. Airplane pilots have checklists too, segmented by when to use each list, and the one for landing includes
"Landing Gear - Down". I used to use a checklist when pushing software to production, and it included (details changed slightly in case a former employer decides this would be a proprietary competitive advantage) "Tests were run. Tests passed. Test results are for this build, not a previous build that worked before you changed things." Those checklists are the organizational scar tissue created from dropping the ball.
How do you do it?
Above all, every single time a ball gets dropped, you write down...
Previously I talked about the skill of doing things One Day Sooner. Today I'm going to talk about a different way of working which is in some ways its opposite. The Sazen for this approach is "Never Drop A Ball." I was exposed to this approach in my teens, though I didn't grasp it on an intuitive, fluid level until I was midway through university.
It's the method of work I've been in most often for the last year or so, and while it's not the way to get things done that I most enjoy, it does have some benefits. Never Drop A Ball has some downsides in use, with the main issue being fairly predictable from the phrase "reliably doing the bare minimum." For my own case, the part I like the least is that I don't feel proud of most of the output.
It works something like this: make a list of the things that actually, really, no fooling needs to happen, and then take multiple routes to ensure that those things happen.
What does it look like?
In grade school, I would sometimes get confused by how repetitive teachers got on field trips. "Is everyone here?" they would ask again and again. "Line up neatly as you go into the next room," they'd call, and then count us as we walked by. When I was older and sometimes responsible for shepherding kids myself, I began to realize the wisdom of my elders on this point.
You have many goals when guiding a bunch of ten-year olds through a wilderness hike. First among these goals is not to lose any kids. If you counted fifteen when you started the hike, you really really want there to be fifteen kids when you get to the end of the hike. Perhaps in theory you might be willing to grant that filling the children with the joys and wonders of the natural world is worth a tiny bit more risk to them! That's the reason for the hike after all. This argument will do little to help you in the event you can only count to fourteen kids at the end.
You will observe people attempting to never drop a ball constantly comparing against very specific rubrics. Convergent pressures create check lists and todo lists. No task is allowed to be added to the plate without a written (preferably digitalized and timestamped!) reminded of it. Never dropping a ball wants redundancy, and when it can get extra resources those resources are spent quadruple checking things or getting to the same list marginally faster. From the outside, this can look like spending more time and people and money being spent to change nothing except maybe complaints become a little less frequent.
I have worked adjacent to organizations that were constantly dropping the ball. I have talked to them, they'd say a task was very important, and then a month later I'd realize I hadn't heard anything more about it and when I talked to them again they'd slap their forehead and go "oh, right, I forgot!" When I asked them how they forgot, they'd shrug and gesture to piles of paper on their desk. "So much to do. You know how it is." When I asked if the task was in that stack of paper, I'd be told they weren't really sure, maybe it was.
Surgical checklists reportedly save lives by reminding doctors to do things like wash their hands. Airplane pilots have checklists too, segmented by when to use each list, and the one for landing includes
"Landing Gear - Down". I used to use a checklist when pushing software to production, and it included (details changed slightly in case a former employer decides this would be a proprietary competitive advantage) "Tests were run. Tests passed. Test results are for this build, not a previous build that worked before you changed things." Those checklists are the organizational scar tissue created from dropping the ball.
How do you do it?
Above all, every single time a ball gets dropped, you write down...