Studio Non Troppo

“Complexity” and “chaos” are commonly used words that have both everyday and technical meanings. In their technical incarnations, both complexity theory and chaos theory deal in part with cases in which it’s difficult to predict what’s going to happen next.

For chaos theory, think “butterfly effect.” Tiny changes in the initial conditions of a system can have (under certain circumstances) immense effects down the line.

For complexity theory, think “network.” A free, viral YouTube video can have a profound effect on the public’s perception of a company in spite of the company’s multimillion dollar advertising budget.

Even if your system is complex (and not all systems are), that doesn’t mean you can determine in advance which YouTube video will go viral, and even if your system is chaotic (and not all systems are), that doesn’t mean you can tell which huge effect the butterfly will have down the line.

When the system you are in is complex or chaotic, you’ve got to get over the idea that you’re going for mastery. Mastery, predictability, and control just don’t stack up in complex or chaotic systems the way they do in other contexts.

Instead, cultivate fluid response and resilience.

It’s called “eighty-twenty” or the Pareto Principle: you get 80% of the bang from 20% of the buck. That’s one way to think of it. Here are some others:

• the top 20% of your customers provide 80% of your orders
• the worst 20% of your clients provide 80% of you headaches (OK, that might be an understatement!)
• the last 20% of “getting the job done” takes 80% of the time (whether or not you’ve budgeted that much time)

Photo: Denzil~

Eighty-twenty is a rule of thumb, not a rule of law (or even of mathematics), so instead of feeling sentenced to the consequences, you can use it as a starting point to reflect on what you’re doing and not doing.

Sometimes, it’s worth doing all 100%. Other times, it’s worth stopping after you’ve done the big-payoff 20%, using elsewhere the resources you’ve freed up by not continuing into the diminishing-returns region of the remaining 80%. Using eighty-twenty as one of your reflective tools, a tool to help to decide what to do and what not to do, can give you back the feeling that you have a choice.

Photo: akunamatata

Working on a big project can be compared to climbing a big hill.

The thing is, with many really big projects, the experience goes something like this: 1) you start climbing, realizing it’s going to be a long trip, 2) you push onward and upward, push, push, push, putting one foot in front of the other, 3) you see the summit before you, and just as you reach the top, 4) you discover it’s not the top at all, just a brief leveling off before angling upwards again.

The psychological effect of this is heavy fatigue. We tend to allocate the energy to ourselves that we need to accomplish the task we have identified, so if the work doesn’t let up where we think it should, that can be a heavy blow.

Imagine a marathon runner reaching the finish line tape, only to read a note pinned there: “today’s marathon is 30 miles instead of the usual 26.2 miles. Thanks for your understanding.”

In these really big projects, such as starting a business, you need to approach it as a long haul. In particular, think of it as a haul indefinitely longer than you think it will be. It’s not that you should be trying to play a mind game with yourself, trying to trick yourself into lasting longer. Instead, make sure every work step, on average, includes the rest and nutrition you need to keep going.

Photo: gilles chiroleu

About halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, off the west side of I-25, stands someone’s great idea that didn’t make it. Originally designed as an outlet mall, it failed to attract enough customers and was bought up by a Native American group that renamed it “Traditions!” and restyled it as one-stop shopping for Indian gifts.

That failed, too, and some other enterprising folks bought up the whole outfit and turned it into a turnkey movie studio and production mall (can you call that a mall?)

I saw recently that it’s for sale again.

I’m guessing it has something to do with the location. People driving between Albuquerque and Santa Fe are, for the most part, pretty focused on getting to the city they didn’t leave from. The drive is about an hour but would be 15 minutes longer to exit I-25 and see the “great idea,” given that it’s not an easy-off, easy-on exit.

In any event, the “great idea” wasn’t.

Since so many people with much more disposable income than you come up with great ideas that fail, you should notice this and not take it for granted that your great idea will succeed.

But don’t take this the wrong way.

You should still try out your great ideas. Just spend a little time figuring out how you’re going to avoid bankrupting yourself if the idea doesn’t pan out. That way, you can keep rolling out new trials of new “great ideas,” and eventually, in retrospect, some of your guesses will turn out to have been right on.

This is a post about “good enough.”

“Good enough” is not good enough when it is:

• shoddy work
• the result of not caring
• a manifestation of avoidance.

“Good enough” is an approach that’s justified (and possibly even optimal) when:

• you need to have something out there in the world to see how it does
• your belief that you can plan a future sequence of events is an erroneous belief in controllability
• you have perfectionist tendencies that keep you from getting anything done.

It’s not the scarcity of money or time or knowledge. The real barrier to entry is uncertainty. If you knew that what you were trying right now would work eventually, you wouldn’t fret about spending your money or time. But unless you’re very good at practicing non-attachment or are the gambling type, that’s not how it feels.

It’s tough, not knowing if your work will create the outcome you think you want.

Photo: kwerfeldein

There’s a greeting card that asks (paraphrased), “what would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?” There’s a problem with these encouraging words, though (or with this platitude, depending on what mood you’re in):

Without uncertainty, most endeavors would become unbearably boring.

Ellen J. Langer has remarked that golf wouldn’t be much fun for long if you knew every shot would be a hole in one. Now that may sound like one of those annoying comments about lottery winners – “they were much happier before they won.” Yeah, yeah, we think. Just let ME win, and let me find out for myself whether I’ll be less happy.

But we don’t have the choice of eliminating uncertainty. Our perception that we could is illusory.

The only way through the barrier is to act even though we’re uncertain.

The project facing you is huge. Complicated. Overwhelmingly immense. How do you respond? Terror? Anger? Procrastination? A Zen laugh?

Photo: Yogi

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you’re looking at the mountain in front of you. But exactly how you look at the tangle of tasks can make the difference between responding (i.e. acting) and merely reacting.

How do you think about tasks and time?

Consider the difference between:

1. There are many things that I need to have done
2. There are many things that I need to do right now

#1 leaves you with no chance of feeling good about yourself. You’re already behind! Depending on your personality, this may or may not demoralize and paralyze you.

#2 leaves you open to a persistent case of information overload. With so many things to do right now, you’ve unwittingly given yourself yet another thing to do: figure out which of these zillion things you should really do right now! I know I don’t function well under this kind of pressure. You might be able to, but I’d still like to recommend another approach.

Spend a little time to decide, “what do I have to do first?”

Notice I didn’t say, decide what to do first, second, and third. This is not a plan-a-thon; it’s a survival strategy. You could think of it task triage. The first benefit is that you remove the additional pressure–the information overload pressure–of not knowing which of the many tasks facing you to address first. That’s pretty nice, already. But there’s another benefit that may trump any other you could think of.

With only one thing in front of you to do next, you will be able to start.

You have many choices in how you define that first task. Don’t make it too big. “Just sit down and write the novel” is too big. “Sit down and write the first chapter of the novel” is also too big.

Watch yourself: “Buy a ream of paper” might be too small, or, rather, it may just be you procrastinating. Or…it may in fact be the first thing you need to do before you can make any other forward progress on your novel. You’ve got to be honest with yourself here.

Once you have decided what it is you have to do first, and then after you have accomplished that task, the next step is clear: you decide (again), “what do I have to do first?”

Photo: titanium22

We received a cherry tree via UPS last night. Sue had ordered the tree sometime in the fall for delivery in the spring. It’s a bare root tree and is a self-pollenating dwarf variety. We’re excited to have the tree and are looking forward to seeing it grow and blossom and fruit.

The thing is, we don’t know where we’re going to plant it.

It’s a busy day today, and we’re looking to plant the tree tomorrow (the instructions say we can keep it indoors that long). We don’t really have a “perfect” place to plant it, but there are many places on the property we obviously won’t put it, so at least we’ve narrowed down the possibilities some.

Once we plant it, we won’t want to move it. It’s not as if we could try one spot for a week and then move it to another one; it’s not a houseplant. So picking a spot is a commitment.

We don’t know how big it will actually grow, what shape it will be, or how it will affect the other plants nearby or the ecology of our little plot. We’ll be able to prune it, adjust the watering, and move some of the things around it, but there’s only so much we will be able to adjust or control about the tree’s life.

The most important thing is that we do have to plant it. We can’t wait to find or make a “perfect spot” for it.

So, unlike what I advocated in my post about setting things up to be easily modified, we’ll just be putting it into the ground and seeing what happens. I think nurturing and building, though having creating in common, feel very different.