Start Thrashing

"Travelanche" by
Chiot's Run via Flicker 

Exam Cram by zslibrary via Flickr

Everyone thrashes. The question is when do you thrash?

You've had this vacation planned for months. Your travel reservations were made well in advance. Yet despite your careful planning and preparations, you still find yourself up to 3am the night before you leave taking care of last minute details. You're thrashing.

You've known that this exam was coming for the entire semester. You received the study guide three weeks in advance. It's the night before the exam. It's 3am. You're thrashing.

Three months ago your team was asked to write a report for your company. It was a long and challenging process. Next week the report is due and everyone on the team is starting to get nervous. Some of them are arguing that entire sections need to be re-written. You're thrashing.

The concept of thrashing was introduced to me by Seth Godin in his book Linchpin:

Any project worth doing involves invention, inspiration, and at least a little bit of making stuff up. Traditionally, we start with an inkling, adding more and more detail as we approach the ship date. And the closer we get to shipping, the more thrashing occurs. Thrashing is the apparently productive brainstorming and tweaking we do for a project as it develops. Thrashing might mean changing the user interface or rewriting an introductory paragraph. Sometimes thrashing is merely a tweak; other times it involves major surgery.

Thrashing is essential. The question is: when to thrash? (Linchpin, pg. 104)

 Thrashing and Shipping are two concepts that are closely connected (Make sure you read my other post on shipping). The closer a project gets to the ship date, the more nervous and involved people become. Your immediate supervisor realizes that when your project/report/widget goes live, it's going to reflect on him. As the due date for your group project approaches, the members of your group who haven't contributed realize that their grade is in this as well.

The late contributions of others can be detrimental to a project. At the 11th hour, major changes can harm the cohesiveness of the project. Despite this fact, the contributors frequently demand that their changes be implemented.

The wise and experienced leader will create an environment which encourages early thrashing. Call an all hands meeting as soon as the project/initiative/task is launched. Invite everyone who will have a stake in the project or whose reputation could be impacted by the project. Make them come.

If they don't come to that first meeting, they forfeit the right to comment/modify/change the project at the last minute. If you want to give input, it has to be given early, not late.

The challenge will come as your ship date approaches. Despite thrashing early, you and your team will still be tempted to make major modifications, changes, and additions at the last minute. It's the nature of the human mind to doubt the quality of something immediately before it is publicly displayed. Resist these urges and be confident in your early planning.

The concept of thrashing early makes complete sense to me. After reading Linchpin I thought back the last project that I was involved in and it perfectly fit Godin's description of thrashing late. At the last minute we made enormous changes to our plans which completely threw off our schedule and put us over budget. We should have thrashed early.

Capacity. Are you Over it?

As a die-hard Internet user I live and die by the bandwidth of the network that I am using. The capacity of the network determines what I am able to accomplish.

The principle of capacity applies to other areas of life as well:

You can only serve someone else if you aren't overextended.

You can only demonstrate love to someone else if you aren't emotionally drained.

You can only help comfort someone who is overwhelmed if you aren't overwhelmed.

Over Capacity!

One of the reasons I have been thinking so much about my capacity is because I am a person who would prefer to be stretched to the max. I like to test my limits; to see how far I can go. It's the American way after all-- work hard, play hard, leave nothing on the field.

The true ability of a person might be better measured not by the time energy and emotion they expend, but by how much time, energy, and emotion they have left after they accomplish their assigned duties. The person that has something left in the tank has the opportunity to truly impact other peopled who are over capacity.

What I'm suggesting is somewhat heretical because there is an unspoken assumption that if you have extra time energy and emotion left over, you are lazy and should be doing something else. That's typically how I feel. In the end it all depends on how you use your extra capacity. If it's spent in front of the TV or at the bar by yourself, then you probably should be doing more. If you take the opportunity to help and impact someone else, I think that's time well spent.

Are you over capacity?

Flipped Class Workshop Resources

This week I traveled to Wisconsin to help teachers at University School of Milwaukee flip their classrooms.

In preparation for the event I built out a Google Site with tips, ideas, projects, and examples to help teachers get started in flipping their classrooms.

Please feel free to browse the site and use the resources that I put together.

Shipping

I recently finished reading Linchpin by Seth Godin. There were a couple of ideas in the book that were very powerful. One of them is the idea of shipping.

"The greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to humans in the marketplace."

Flickr via zyphbear

The concept of "shipping" is simple: an idea is fully realized and release for public consumption, use, or purchase. It's not just a scribble on the back of a napkin or a business plan in a file cabinet, it's a real, live, fully functional thing.

As I have become better connected in my industry (education), I become increasingly skeptical and frustrated by unrealized ideas. It's easy to criticize existing solutions and write about a much better method or idea. It's easy to blog about how this new piece of technology will revolutionize the classroom or how standardized testing is bad for students and should be abolished.

The internet is filled with talkers. The number of doers is far smaller.

A linchpin is someone who has the desire, determination, and drive to see an idea through to the end. Not just to talk about it, not just to criticize the existing establishment, but to actually do something to change it. Linchpins ship.

Shipping is scary, because once you complete something and open it up to public examination, you become the object of evaluation and criticism, and it's always a possibility that your idea will fail.

The most successful companies and individuals who have the ability to overcome obstacles, maintain vision and focus, and push a product, idea, or solution out the door.

I'm evaluating the things that I spend my time doing to make sure that I'm producing something of value, not simply adding to a deluge of words.