For a long time I’ve felt like the only thing worth working on is the next most important thing. Why spend time working on something that’s less important if there’s something more important that needs work?
I’ve changed my mind on this. I think it’s always good to be working on two things: The next most important thing, and the next most interesting thing.
It’s hard for an interesting thing to compete for your attention if your only criteria for attention is criticality. Interesting things are rarely critical. They’re exploratory. And if you only think in terms of what absolutely needs your attention right now, you’ll never leave room for things that might satisfy your curiosity. That’s important too, just on a different level.
It’s in this spirit that I hope we have the courage to be more experimental at 37signals. Experimental design, experimental tech, experimental business models, experimental strategies, experimental experiments that may lead to brand new insights and outcomes we didn’t know we were capable of before.
I’m looking forward to the surprises.
Scott
on 11 Jun 13Doing this right now. Took time this afternoon to learn Rails exception-handling better so I can move from “front end developer” to one day being a “full stack developer”.
It takes discipline, though. Or maybe it’s allowing yourself the opportunity to indulge a little in something that’s not immediately beneficial, but still satisfying.
Craig
on 11 Jun 13Did you just use an apostrophe for a plural? Yeah, I think you did.
mrpinto
on 12 Jun 13There’s the old Frank Covey quadrant system that creates a matrix based on importance and urgency. The natural hangup is to do the important-and-urgent and if there’s time, the unimportant-but-urgent. The important-but-not-urgent ones are harder.
stenny
on 12 Jun 13why did you post this?
Peter Marquis-Kyle
on 12 Jun 13Craig: Yes, Jason did just use an apostrophe to pluralize the “i” in the title of this piece, and this is correct according to the usual style guides.
Using “criteria” instead of the singular “criterion”, as Jason did in the third paragraph, was a mistake. But it’s a small mistake, and hardly worth mentioning. Oops, sorry, I just did.
Dustin Anderson
on 12 Jun 13It depends what you’re optimizing for.
Depends where you are in life (maslow’s heirarchy of needs).
Critical stuff gets done when you’re more risk averse.
Exploration happens when you’re feeling confident and inspired.
Or, if you’re thinking clearly enough, you’ll probably see that it just depends on how you want to style your day.
Sounds like we’re gonna see some cool stuff come out of 37signals.
You’ve deserved it. You guys have worked hard. Enjoy doing the inspiring stuff. We’ll love watching you inspire us.
dankim4lifeCesar
on 12 Jun 13Love the fact that you embrace experimentation. Would you say that you didn’t experiment much in the early days of your company?
Craig
on 12 Jun 13@Peter Marquis-Kyle
I guess all your local style guide authors were smoking crack then.
Sam
on 12 Jun 13@Craig
You make a lower case letter plural by using an apostrophe, otherwise it would be ‘is’ not multiple i’s
Cecile
on 12 Jun 13Excellent post Jason ! I just made it one of my rule to play by at work.
I have a “to do” (and too long) list of all the urgent/important things I have to do and another of the most interesting things to work on -the ones I love doing the most.
I actually wrote down the “second” list on a billboard in my office. Once in a while I look it up and indulge in some work on the “dream” list.
Michael
on 12 Jun 13Imperative Important Interesting Imaginative Impossible
Impossible becomes the new imperative and then you start over.
Geoffrey
on 13 Jun 13@Craig I think you’re looking for this guide on apostrophes:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe
Craig
on 13 Jun 13Trollololol.
Adam
on 13 Jun 13In my work I’ve always found that the non-critical help inform the critical. There’s generally a ‘get-it-done’ attitude with the critical because it just literally needs to exist where non-critical can have time and care. Time and care for those motivated usually means pushing the boundaries and trying new things and more often than not, a learning experience happens. Learning can only help and inform and increase the success of critical tasks.
This discussion is closed.