This post is a real-time exploration of a topic that is new to me, in this case, a “product development strategy” called scrum. I want to explore this new concept on its own merits. I also want to demonstrate the way my information-gathering process works. I’m a divergent thinker, so my mind races off in all directions, most of which may seem irrelevant or ridiculous to someone who is better informed. As I learn more, my focus starts to contract again, until finally I have a solid understanding of the subject. My learning curve is a very long, flat line, with a suddenly steep ramp way off at the end. Why would the average person, a person who does not develop software, care about a “product development strategy”? I have a suspicion that this thing called scrum echoes a seasonal work rhythm that would be a natural, practical fit for most people. I think it could be even more valuable for an individual working on personal projects than for a working team. In a nutshell, the way I understand scrum to work is that one person owns the project, and the team works together to break it down into a task list, called a “product backlog.” The list is broken down further into a “sprint backlog” – work that needs to be done in a sprint, usually two weeks but not more than a month. Each person chooses a task that suits his or her skills and interest. Everything must be completed by the end of the sprint time period. In software, this is when they “ship it.” Then it’s time for another sprint. Anything else that needs to get done, but realistically can’t/shouldn’t be started until after the current sprint, is added to the product backlog. The team meets for a 15-minute “scrum” every day to report progress. How would this work at home? Let’s say I’m trying to “get organized” and my house is cluttered and in need of a serious spring cleaning. I’ve got this passel o’ kids/roommates/pets who may or may not be on board. Where do I start? I can break down the areas of the house into two-week sections, and work only in that area until it’s done. If I can’t convince anyone else who lives with me to help out (or at least stop being afraid of the vacuum), at least I can ride herd on them and keep them from adding more clutter in that sprint’s focus area. Gradually, the clean and organized portion starts to spread, until finally the whole house is done. I can schedule a party on a specific day so I have a built-in deadline. Let’s say I’m trying to “get in shape” and I’m overweight and I have no idea what I’m doing. (Purely hypothetical, of course. I was born in a gymnasium with a free weight in each hand. Weren’t you?) I can set a small goal that I aim to reach in a two-week time period, and pause for analysis at the end of the sprint. If I didn’t meet my goal, I can crunch numbers and try to figure out what happened. #1: Figure out where the gain came from. #2: Stop gaining. #3: Get used to what maintenance feels like. #4: Lose some weight. #5: Adjust to how physical changes can trigger emotional changes. Two weeks is a short enough period to make course corrections, and also a long enough period to see a trend line start to emerge. If the trend line is not sloping even a tiny amount after two weeks, there is a flaw in the plan somewhere. Let’s say I’m a writer/artist/Maker and I’ve got a bunch of unfinished projects. I can plan a sprint and a hard deadline for each one. At the end of a sprint, I can look at my work basket or my table or my draft folder and get a better sense of how much I can realistically produce in a set time period. When I decided not to take on any further craft projects until I had finished everything I had currently planned, it took a solid ten years. In fact, I’m still working on the last one. (It wasn’t until I got to the tail end of all these crafty things that I started writing; the response to my writing has been far better than the response to any particular hat or scarf or children’s toy I ever made). This is my novice understanding of scrum. Next, I’ll read a couple of books and a bunch of articles on the topic. Either this will help me to understand something really cool and useful, which is great, or I’ll realize I had no idea what I was talking about, and I’ll revert to my own warped ideas and lose interest in the idea that originally caught my attention. That’s fine, too. It happens. I’m finding that the idea of establishing a production schedule longer than a week and shorter than a year is really attractive and helpful for me at this time. Maybe it can help other people, too. First of all, nobody has asked me. My opinions on many topics have been freely available five days a week for nearly a decade. I’m also a committed news junkie. If someone wanted to know my opinion on a political issue, I’m sure I would have been approached. The question then is not whether anyone else thinks I have something of value to add to a discussion, but whether I think I do.
I’m no expert. I have a bachelor’s degree in history, and I have plenty of interesting observations to make about historical trends from antiquity through the Dark Ages through medieval times through the Enlightenment through the American Colonial period through… well, through the present. That’s why I have a household rule that we only discuss pre-Industrial politics. It’s a good way to preserve friendships and maintain a comfortable social setting. Avoiding modern political discussions is the reason we don’t have a double-headed axe embedded in my dining table. The trouble is, as laypeople, we can’t do much more than follow other people’s reportage. We watch our preferred TV news shows, follow our preferred comedians, read our preferred blogs and news websites, listen to our preferred radio stations and podcasts, and read our preferred magazines, newspapers, and nonfiction books. We fall into one of 2.5 ideological camps, and when we’re exposed to materials from another team’s viewpoint, we go straight to disgust. We’re so polarized that we can only really feel contempt for the Idiots Who are So Stupid as to Believe That Stuff. But it’s not like we’re doing original journalism or any kind of research or investigation ourselves. I include myself in this, of course. Never read the comments. If I ever stitch another sampler, that’s probably what it will say, and I’ll hang it on the wall above our desktop computer. We had learned not to read the comments of articles before we became active on Facebook, where the problem is nearly as bad. It’s very like a radio. Tune in to a specific station and hear a set type of material. Turn off the radio and turn it on again three years later, and the content will be much the same. I swear I have read the same discussion 20 times, with the same participants holding all the same views and linking to all the same sources, with only the specific current event differing slightly. We’re not changing each other’s minds. All we’re doing is digging in our heels and confirming our own biases a little more every passing day. In my personal acquaintance, I believe I know two, maybe three, individuals who are truly politically independent (and none of them are me). I would say I know maybe a dozen whose insights are at least somewhat original or who seem able to moderate productive discussions. I follow these conversations, but I almost never have an opinion that hasn’t already been stated by someone else. The vast majority of the time, when I stick my oar in, I wind up wishing I hadn’t. The proverbial “friend of a friend” always seems to show up, and for whatever reason, we feel more comfortable being antagonistic and confrontational with people after that extra degree of separation. All that happens is that I walk away determined to avoid getting sucked into another can’t-win “discussion.” We can’t agree on universally acceptable sources. We can’t agree on protocol or ways to moderate “debates.” We can’t remain civil. We certainly can’t sway away from our innate ideological feelings. Nothing - absolutely, literally nothing - that we hear or read is ever going to move us into one of the other 1.5 politico-emotional camps. Most of our interactions in these matters are going to result in either loss of respect for people we used to like, or simple confirmation of everything we already thought and believed. What can possibly be gained from this? As a kid, I overheard my parents having passionate discussions about the news most nights of the week. When we got together with other people, though, I don’t recall this happening. These were private matters. People socialized in person much more often in the 1980s and previously. I was 30 before I started to be widely aware of my acquaintances’ political leanings. This wasn’t because I was unaware of current events; it was because it just didn’t come up in conversation. Things have changed. They’ve changed in an ugly way. I really wish we could reverse direction and learn to lean toward each other, and I think that’s only possible when we change the subject and avoid lay discussions about topics that can only end in mutual irritation. I’m going through my vast accumulation of paper notes, and it is interesting what’s coming up. From professional experience, I can say that paper is the most common type of clutter, and that some households have no clutter other than paper. Paper is a category unto itself. Most of it looks alike: 8.5”x11” white copy paper or note paper; business envelopes; receipts. The information content on a single piece of paper may represent several hours of work to be done, or it may be meaningless. Most households have the same sorts of paper: · Junk mail · Receipts · Bills and account statements · Scraps of paper/envelopes with unidentified phone numbers on them · Grocery lists · To-do lists · Recipes · Academic papers, including children’s homework My paper hoard is different, mostly because I took steps years ago to avoid the usual sources of paper clutter. We pay our bills online whenever possible, and always choose the paperless option so we don’t get a printed statement. I opted out of junk mail, and whenever anything shows up that I don’t want, I use the PaperKarma app to opt out of that too. We use Mint to track our spending; I avoid taking receipts for anything that doesn’t need categorizing, and then toss anything we aren’t worried about returning or documenting in some way. Mystery phone numbers are a relic of the pre-Internet, pre-social networking age. Shopping lists and reminders stay on the phone. Neither of us really hung onto any old academic papers, although we have three degrees between us. So the paper flow into our house is almost entirely generated by my creative output. It turns out that my papers fall into a few clear categories: · Writing ideas (scenarios, titles, characters, plots, scenes, lines of dialogue, drafts) · Strategic planning (bucket lists, projects) · Journaling (of the ‘brain dump’ variety) · Current study notes (foreign languages) · Lists of books, movies, music, apps Only the first of these five categories is really important to me. My failing is that I used to jot down important notes anywhere, including in the midst of a list of books. It turns out that many of the papers I have saved are for the sake of only a few words relevant to a writing project. Clearly, I need a system to capture these ideas. I did set up such a system this year, using my phone. I have a Notes page called Idea Log, and I start a new one each month. I write down all my random thoughts throughout the day, if there are any, and date them. This has worked out really well, especially because I can use Spotlight Search or just skim through them quickly. I also have a couple of active Notes for my front-burner projects. The flow of papers and index cards is slowing to a trickle. Now I just need to go back and record the backlog. I took out all my paper notes, index cards, photos, notebooks, clipboards, loose papers, and the working files from my laptop bag. I stacked them up on my desk (a standing desk I built myself). I knew when I set out that this would be a worthwhile exercise. I didn’t realize the problem was as bad as it is. What’s my motivation? I’m a tidy person (now) and most would consider me fairly well organized. The thing is, all of these “hard copies” are irreplaceable. They don’t have any kind of backup. I live in a region that is prone to several varieties of natural disaster, including earthquakes, wildfires, flash floods, and mudslides. (Plus I have pets). If anything happens to my notes, they’re gone. Seriously, there is no possible way I could evacuate all this stuff. So that’s the worst case scenario, may it never happen. More pressing is the fact that all this paper isn’t searchable. I have to remember whether the piece of information I want is in a notebook, a file folder, or an index card, unless of course it’s electronic. See, my notes aren’t even consolidated in one medium. This manifestation of my indefatigable creative mind has spilled over into Evernote, Dropbox, my email, and notes on my iPhone, as well as files on my writing laptop and the desktop I share with my husband. Recently, a friend asked me if I had information that would help him apply for a creative project. It so happened that I did, even though our project happened ten years ago! I knew I had it. The trouble was that it could have been in one of six different places. It is pretty impressive that it took only half an hour to pull up this completely obscure remnant of my paper past. If I had already scanned all my stuff, like I have meant to do for 7-8 years, it would have taken me about two minutes. In the process of rummaging, I knew without a doubt what my first Discardia project would be. Here’s how I’m breaking it down into small steps: 1. Set aside time every afternoon to work 2. Make some decisions about where to store which data (thumb drive or cloud?) 3. Make some guidelines about what I know I want to keep and what can go away 4. Assess the notebooks, because most of them are mostly blank 5. Divide between archival, back burner, and active project queue 6. Choose what to scan and what to type (I type 90+ WPM and text is more searchable) 7. Scan it all, most important first 8. Discard at least 80% of the paper |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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