Underneath

Some things do not fit in a list because they do not happen at a particular moment. They happen continuously, or they never happen at all.

Waiting

A field lying fallow is not idle, it is recovering.

Decisions with no way back need a night in between, and good ideas almost never turn up on the first pass. Speed is not free: what you hand over in exchange is maturity.

With anything that cannot be undone I write my answer first, badly, and let it rest. I skip this more often than I should, and it shows.

The rule I use for whether something deserves the wait is simple: if undoing it would cost more than an afternoon, sleep on it.

The notebook

Ten minutes a week: what you decided, why, what you rejected and what would change your mind.

It looks like paperwork and it is the opposite. It is what turns your judgement into something you can consult. While you are the only one who knows why each thing is the way it is, you do not have a system: you depend on being available.

The use that has served me most is not avoiding repeated arguments, it is telling a bad decision apart from a bad outcome. They are not the same, and if all you remember is the outcome you will learn the wrong lesson both times.

Alone or with people

Working alone you are faster and more fragile. You cut without meetings, but nobody tells you when you have spent three weeks on the wrong part.

If you work that way, find somebody outside you can show things to without asking permission, and tell them plainly that their job is to make you uncomfortable. That last part matters: if you do not say it they will be kind, because kind is the default.

With a team you gain friction and lose agility. The trade is worth it, because what a team brings is not execution capacity, it is disagreement. Execution can be bought; informed disagreement cannot.

That said, every decision needs an owner and not a committee, and the conversation to define something is usually worth more than the definition you arrive at.

What this does not fix

It will not tell you whether the problem deserves your time. That is not a product question and no method answers it.

It does not replace having somebody to argue with properly.

And it does not cure attachment. In my case it has only moved: I now call something a prototype so I can let myself start it, and then I do not throw it away once it has answered its question. It is the same attachment with better vocabulary.

Questions people ask about this

What order do these steps go in?

No fixed one. You go back to listening after showing it, and back to cutting the day you finally know how to say it. The only thing that decides the order is what a mistake costs in each phase, and the project sets that.

Does this work inside a large company?

The steps do; the timescales do not. All of this comes from small teams with little slack. In an organisation with many people touching the same surface, things that look like overhead here are the only thing preventing chaos.

Do I need all six steps?

No. Skip the one your project has already settled. What is worth not skipping is the one you are reluctant to do, because that reluctance usually points at the one you needed.

How often should I revisit all this?

When something stops fitting. A method revisited on a schedule becomes a ritual; one revisited when it fails is still a tool.