Finding Friction

If you have to do something again, it should be fairly simple and straightforward to get it done. It’s not a one-off, it is reoccurring, at least twice now.

It’s not surprising that doing something the first time can be onerous. But if it is something that repeats, even if the frequency is low and the time between doing it is months, it should not be held back by a lot of friction.

So, figure out why it is not simple. Are there too many steps? Can some of these be combined?

Figure out why it is not straightforward. What are the blockers? Why are they blocking stuff?

For repeating actions, you should always be able to put together a checklist of the things that are necessary. That doesn’t include dependencies or paralleling it, or how they interact. Just the entire list of every little thing that needs to get done. To really find friction though, you need to get every little thing in there, so matter how tiny, even if it is trivial like sending emails or changing a file.

That list is where you start when removing friction. Are there things there that are unnecessary? Get rid of them. Are there things there that can be done less frequently? Reduce them. Are there things that are missing that make the endeavor riskier than it needs to be? Add them in.

Focus on the core of what needs to get done, then throw away everything unnecessary. Break the list into two different categories, one for the actual stuff, and the other for any tracking of that stuff. Is the tracking redundant? Is the tracking itself really getting used for tracking? Throw away as much as possible. Minimize the tracking, track only important or key items. Any and all tracking is both expensive and easily gamed, so it should only be carefully included, not arbitrarily tossed around.

Once you’ve pared down the essential list, and the tracking list, you have a good idea of what you have to do, how long it will take, and the expense of actually tracking it.

From this revised list you can know that it is as small as you can make it, but also you can probably use a computer to automate a lot of it, nearly as it is laid out. Automation will need to consider the dependencies, but often that isn’t very tricky unless you are trying to optimize it to be concurrent.

One of the core goals for any type of endeavor should always be to remove as much friction as possible. Doing that and minimizing Yak Shaving will give you a stable capacity to get things done. Being able to do things faster and easier is the first step in trying to do them better.