Work on what matters

https://lethain.com/work-on-what-matters/?ref=theslice&utm_source=emailoctopus&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue%20104%20%28for%207-jul%202022%29

by memorable • 4 years ago

84 11 4 years ago

lethain.com

gatkinso• 4 years ago

sounds like this person thinks about work too much

drewcoo• 4 years ago

We only get value from finishing projects, and getting a project over the finish line is the magical moment it goes from risk to leverage.

I think all too often people structure projects as very large batches of work that only all work together and otherwise are waste. And in that case, the author's claim is true. But it's undesirable. That's an incredibly risky way to do things.

If, instead, the author means that a project is the atomic unit of work that creates value, then the claim is also true. And less risky.

But if a project is a set of smaller independent chunks of work that each incrementally add value on their own, I'll disagree. Delivering the project is not the only thing that matters. It may not be the most important thing.

delivering value > delivering projects

I think this tends to be lost on people who manage projects instead of value.

sumanthvepa• 4 years ago

One of the problems with working on what matters is that 'what matters' isn't always apparent in the moment. Things that seem enormously important in the moment, may turn out to be unimportant in the long term. While it is important to work on 'important' things, do spend at least some time on 'unimportant' things. Those may turn out to be more valuable than you think.

13of40• 4 years ago

The way I would put it is when you think about a REST API, for example, the tendency is to see the sum of the methods in it as 'what matters'. But shipping is actually the sum of source control, the deployment story, development experience, compliance, quality gates, etc., and finally the methods themselves. What you don't want to do is hyper-focus on the last bit and think you're going to catch up on the rest as an afterthought.

wawjgreen• 4 years ago

i agree 100%. it is not easy to decide what is ultimately important, but there are cases that this is so.

tambourine_man• 4 years ago

Exactly, came here to say the same.

Even when I know that something matters, there are many other things that also do and choosing between them has been a lifelong challenge.

If you do know what matters the most undoubtedly, why would you do anything else? The hard part is the knowing.

caliwagon• 4 years ago

It's hard to take these grand career advice articles too seriously. Unless someone can prove they have been able to live thousands of times, then maybe it is worth taking seriously. Otherwise, just another data point to keep in mind but not much more.

slotrans• 4 years ago

This is also an important factor to consider when choosing a company to work at! Dig into what a company values and ensure it aligns with your intended personal growth. If a company’s leadership is entirely folks who focus their energy on performant urgency or acts of fealty, don’t be surprised when your success in the company depends on those activities.

That's great in spirit, but you have absolutely no hope of determining that before joining a company, unless it's either a big enough company that its workings are effectively public (Google et al) or you personally know an insider.

throwawayarnty• 4 years ago

How would this advice apply to people who have won Nobel prizes? These people worked on things that were scientifically unpopular and deemed unimportant (eg autophagy, GFP).

What matters is only often clear in hindsight. Don’t focus too much on results, but focus on an inner concentration for your work that is decoupled from external rewards.

heisenbit• 4 years ago

While I agree knowing what "matters" is hard and hindsight is 20/20 we all know a lot of things do not matter in the long run. Before latching on the headline here is the tldr:

- don't do stuff that clearly does not matter. This is elaborated to a reasonable degree.

- work where you can grow and add value. Obviously here it gets fuzzy but then by nature of this aspect there can't be a hard and fast recipe.

torginus• 4 years ago

This article is so strange - it's literally self contradiction.

It defines preening as the activity that is highly visible and appreciated by management - yet somehow it concludes that it isn't the thing that gets you promoted.

In my experience what gets you promoted is doing highly visible work, soft skills, sucking up to management and being at the right place at the right time, as well as aggressively asking for promotion - in short, presenting the best possible image in the eyes of people who decide who gets promoted.

If you quietly check in breakthrough features, fix up critical infrastructure, you might make/save the company a ton of money, but most middle management won't care, notice or understand your contributions.

And the final contradiction is at the end of the article - doing good technical work most likely won't earn you any externally convertible recognition, and thus is useless for furthering your career. Your new employer might not even ask about what exactly you did at your previous job, and if they do, nobody can distinguish genuine work from the tall tales everyone tells about themselves.

Work on what matters

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