Category Archives: Productivity

4DX: Applying the First Discipline

In yesterday’s post about The Four Disciplines of Execution, I quickly went through the disciplines and how I am applying them. Today, I want to talk more about the first one, which is to choose one “Wildly Important” goal (WIG), and my thought process as I chose mine.

The first thing to notice is that the book asks you to choose only one WIG. I may be going off script by choosing three, but I am choosing them in very different areas of my life. I have only one work-related WIG, one health WIG, and one personal growth WIG. The book is mostly about work, but I have time carved out for health and personal growth that is separate from work. I have separation between them, so I my focus on one does not affect my focus on another (at the appropriate time).

To find a WIG. The book asks you to define (1) Where you are now (2) Where you want to be, and (3) by when. It’s the same idea as SMART goals.

For work, I am working on a startup with a partner, where I am doing the technical part.

Where am I now? We have an MVP, and we use it every day along with a few trusted users. We have a series of gates we want to get through to launch. Right now, it’s usable, but we’re still missing some core features.
Where do I want to be? Ideally launched, with users, and with some revenue. But, that depends on a lot of factors outside of my control, so it would be hard to put a deadline on it. To make it possible for me to accomplish the goal, it needs to be expressed as something I can do without dependencies.
By When? It’s not ideal for a WIG, which should be longer term, but I think this project will go through phases with different goals right now as we progress through gates. So I am doing this quarter by quarter.

So, my WIG for this is to have no launch blockers in the product by March 31, 2024. There are several features missing that make it impossible to launch today (e.g. signup, forgot password, billing). There aren’t too many of them, and it’s very doable by March. To support our experimentation and product design, there are still other things we should do, but they are not blockers. We may not launch for other reasons, but not because of basic functionality.

My health/fitness WIG is simpler because it inherently doesn’t have dependencies.

Where am I now? I am happy with my level of fitness and health. I have been vegan for a few years and I can generally stay in the weight range I want to be. However, since I was obese for many years, I still have more body fat than I would like. I use a body fat scale that says it’s about 23%, which is accurate enough for my purposes.
Where do I want to be? I have been stuck at this level for a while. Realistically, I could shoot for less than 20%.
By when? The end of 2024.

Fitness WIG: Go from 23% body fat to under 20% body fat by December 31, 2024.

My personal growth goal is related to writing, which is the main thing I have been working on for the past 3 years.

Where am I now? I write regularly in this blog, and I have a writing-themed podcast that is intentionally off-an-on. In 2013, I got a book published by Manning and I have been paid to write articles for Smashing and other places.
Where do I want to be? I want to have more longer-form published work that I sell.
By when? One by June 30 and another by December 31.

Personal Growth WIG: Write two 50-page books by the end of 2024 and put them up for sale.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you how I applied the 2nd discipline.

How I am applying The Four Disciplines of Execution

I read The Four Disciplines of Execution (4DX) a few months ago. It was recommended to me several times—I wish I had read it sooner. It’s in the genre of business productivity systems, which is not surprising since one of the authors, Sean Covey, is the son of Stephen Covey (author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

Like many books in this genre, the book is part of an entire ecosystem, with courses, videos, etc. You can get a good overview there.

Here is a quick summary of the 4 disciplines (it’s more complex than this—the book is worth reading for details)

Have a single important goal that would make a meaningful difference (in your business, life, etc). This will have some lagging indicator.
Figure out a leading indicator that you can act on and track. This is something you can do every day that will build up to the important goal.
Build a compelling scoreboard that tells you if you are winning (achieving the leading indicator).
Have regular (weekly) accountability meetings where you only discuss the goal, leading indicators, and how to put points on the board

To give an example, here’s how I am applying it to my fitness:

Important goal: Reduce Body Fat %. I am doing this primarily by increasing muscle mass. My lagging indicators are goals in bench press and strict pull-ups.
Leading indicator: Days per week doing resistance training.
Scoreboard: I track the workouts on my Apple Watch. I can see the count in the fitness apps I use. My scale tells me Body Fat % to make sure I’m on track. I am also tracking hours in Zone 2 and higher as a secondary indicator.
Accountability: I review it weekly and schedule the next week’s workouts. I also go to Crossfit, which gives me access to coaches that can help.

My personal growth goal is to publish some pamphlets (short books) this year. Here’s my 4DX

Important goal: publish pamphlets. Lagging indicator is 2 books.
Leading indicator: Hours writing per week.
Scoreboard: I’m using personal productivity software that I am working on.
Accountability: I am making season four of my podcast about this where I will discuss my process and progress.

My work goal is to launch the productivity tool I am working on

Important goal: Launch
Leading indicator: Hours coding
Scoreboard: Also tracking in this tool
Accountability: I have weekly meeting with my partner where we discuss progress.

All of my leading indicators are in SMART goal format: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. The main difference is that they are very short-term and more about process.

Obviously, it doesn’t matter if I achieve the leading indicators, but not the lagging ones—the lagging ones are the real goal. The idea (from 4DX) is that leading indicators are something you can act on and track each day. You trust yourself to pick things that are likely to result in the bigger goal. You adjust if they aren’t.

Time in the Zone

I read The Four Disciplines of Execution last year and my main takeaway was that I should build a scoreboard to track a leading indicator of whether I’m “winning” at my important goals.

For tracking my fitness, I’m using the Zones for Training app, which has a nice widget that compares the current cumulative week to the previous one. The number is just the minutes my heart rate was in an exercise zone. I have a goal, but I can also compete with how I did last week.

A dashboard of cumulative time spent in heart rate zones

Leading indicators can be more complex, but just tracking the time that I spend on the important things is enough to get started. I trust that I’ll use that time wisely.

Running Through the New Year

One lesson I learned from Ramit Sethi was to just start your New Years resolutions in December. That way you get a jump start. You get to start the new year with having already made some progress.

I do themes, not resolutions, but the same concept applies. My theme last year was to Make Art with Friends and that went pretty well. I set out to collaborate with others and try to meet more likeminded people who liked to make things. As 2023 is coming to a close, I think I can maintain my gains here without it being my main focus.

This year, I am going to refocus on my fitness, specifically strength training. As I age, I am more concerned with muscle and bone health and I’m convinced that lifting heavy things is the way to go. I’m not waiting until January 1st—I started yesterday.

With that goal and my other plans, I decided to make 2024 The Year of Heavy Lifting. It’s a year where I plan to do some hard things that I’ve been putting off.

If you usually do something for the new year (a resolution, a theme, whatever) don’t wait—start now.

2024 Page-o-Mat Journal

Last year, I released Page-o-Mat, a YAML-based language for defining journal PDFs so that I could make my own Recurring Journal. I used this journal all throughout 2023 and gave some updates along the way: The First 13 Weeks, The Second 13 Weeks, and The Third 13 Weeks. I split the year into 13 week quarters because I do all of my planning by weeks and months and quarters aren’t regular enough.

I just finished making the 2024 version and got a nice surprise. Because January 1st is a Monday, and 2024 is a leap year, the first three quarters line up on 13-week boundaries. Jan 1, April 1, and July 1 are all 13-weeks apart and on Mondays. It’s unnecessary for the way I like to journal, but I do appreciate this. It won’t happen again until 2052.

I pushed the new yaml to the Page-o-Mat repo. There are instructions for building the PDF in the README. I will also be putting a book based on this PDF on LuLu.

Be Skeptical of Points-based Productivity Claims

I do not personally use Story Points in my estimates because I know that everyone outside of development will translate them to time and I want to do that for them.

But, consider this claim: Adopting GitHub Copilot will increase productivity by 20%. I actually believe that to be true, but can you show it with Points? No, you cannot.

Here’s how it should go

You do 10 sprints, you see that you have a steady state velocity of 100 Points
You introduce GitHub Copilot
Maybe for 2 sprints, you see velocity go up because developers over-estimate their stories. Let’s say it’s 120 now. Better report that quick, because …
Then, devs start to adjust their estimates and velocity goes back to where it was.

Productivity went up, but velocity should stay constant because points are just time. You don’t get more time because of productivity gains.

If you see sustained velocity improvements (without changing the number of team members), then I would suspect gaming or a misunderstanding of how points are supposed to work.

Points and Velocity are best for front-line managers to understand what is going on with their teams and to size sprints. They should not be reported outside of the team, because they will be misunderstood and misapplied.

Soundtracks for Life

Maybe it’s my age, but the Rocky Theme pumps me up. I always run harder when it comes up in my playlist. The music from Rocky makes me think of the training montage, and then I want to exercise.

When I read (especially on an airplane), I listen to ocean waves. Music would be a distraction, but hearing waves won’t make me think about them.

I do sometimes listen to music when I program. I once read a study that it can help when doing mundane, rote tasks. Uptempo music helps me—I like to use dance music. Sometimes I’ll just put a single song on repeat.

Right now, I am writing this blog post while listening to “Going the Distance” from Rocky and Rocky II. It’s what plays right after Adrian tells Rocky to win. It’s a little more low-key than the main fanfare and for me, it means that it’s time to get down to business. I think it’s fine when I am trying to get out the words for the first draft, but I’ll probably have to shut it off when I edit.

In all of these cases, I am trying to use sound in the way that movie soundtracks work—to enhance the foreground activity. It’s working in tandem, manipulating my emotions while I am engaged in something else.

Taking a Successful Break

I just finished a break where I traveled for four weeks to see family and friends in places I used to live (in NYC and New England). My intention was not to completely stop working, but that all of my projects would become much lower priority.

Here are some things that worked for me.

Banking content: I didn’t want to have to write every day and podcast every week, but I did want to keep the publishing schedule going. To do that, I pre-recorded five podcasts before I left and wrote many blog posts. I still wrote quite a bit during the break and did have to edit and post the podcasts, but it was much less work than normal.
Setting expectations: Before I left, I made a podcast about how I was taking a break and what my strategy was. I also set meeting expectations with my partners and clients.
Having a generation strategy: To make it a lot easier to make five podcasts in a couple of days, I did a four part series about lessons I learned from Art & Fear.
Lowering the bar: My goal in each podcast is to share something that is helping me in my writing with a clear takeaway. If I had that, I didn’t worry about the length.
Shutting off sometimes: Part of my trip was meant to be a real vacation, and during that time, I completely shut off.
Prioritizing relationships: I never turned down a chance to see my family or friends and made sure that my wife and I had plenty of time together as well. Everything else had to fit in between that.
Having fewer obligations: I do more projects alone or in partnerships that are trying to build modest businesses that can withstand me being away from it. My client work is more advisory and easy to schedule.

As I spoke about in my podcast, I did this exact same trip in 2021 and it completely derailed me. I did not set expectations correctly with a client and had to do a lot more work than I wanted to. I had to pare back everything to just work I was obligated to do and then kept that pattern for more than a year until I could get control again.

This time, using the strategies above, I was able to have the break I wanted and also keep projects going enough so that I could easily pick them back up when I returned.

How I Use JIRA and Trello Together

I started using JIRA for issue tracking when I worked at Trello (at Atlassian), and I still use it now. JIRA does everything I need in managing software projects, but I never send people outside of my team to JIRA because it’s not easy for casual users. For that I use Trello.

I have a Trello board for each project I am managing that is meant to be a high-level summary of that project. It is useful for onboarding and getting its current status easily. It has links to JIRA, Confluence (for specifications), Atlas (for status) and Figma.

This Trello board is the first place I send a new team member to help with onboarding. If someone has a question in Slack about the project, I make sure that it was something you could find out on the board and then link them to it there. The board is a kind of dashboard and central hub of the project.

These hub boards are curated, so I don’t try to use any automations to bring things over. If I think you need more information, I send you directly to the source.

JIRA is useful to the people that work on the project every day. I use Trello for those that just check in weekly or monthly.

Is Vision Pro Just a Really Good Monitor?

I just read Ben Thompson’s take on the Vision Pro, which is admittedly a gushing, glowing, overly optimistic take. But …. he’s actually tried one, so I am taking it seriously. One worry I had was whether the displays actually matched the demo, and it does seem that they do.

His conclusion is that the Vision Pro might be in the same product category as a Mac and if that’s true, the $3499 price isn’t that bad. I absolutely could see a world where you use this instead of a laptop, but probably not on day one because it won’t have the apps I need as a developer.

Even so, compared to a laptop, the biggest downside is travel—I value how thin and light my MacBook Air is, and this is certainly not thin. I can’t easily stick it in a backpack. I also can’t see using this in a café or shared work space.

But, that had me thinking that maybe it’s not a laptop replacement, but an external monitor replacement. I have been eyeing the Studio Display at $1599 and also the new Dell 6K displays at $3200. If a Vision Pro is a better display than those, I don’t need it do much more.

It does make me think I should definitely not just upgrade my monitor yet.