I open the office door and the wall of humidity smacks me in the face. You’d think at 4am it would have cooled off some, but hot air rises… and Japanese houses don’t have central air.
I switch on the air conditioner and fire up the computer.
There are pros and cons to working in almost the opposite time zone as the rest of your company.
One of the drawbacks is waking up to a hundred notifications. Unread emails everywhere, Teams messages.
A tsunami of 21st-century stress. Dings, unread message counts. Who needs caffeine with this shot of dawn adrenaline?
I start to dig in. First, with the email. I’m an inbox-zero type of guy.
Lots of Asana notifications.
Patterns start to emerge.
Comments.
“Do we have an update on this ticket?”
“What’s the update on this ticket?”
I thought we had gone over this. A sense of deja vu sets in.
“Where are we at on this?”
We had put a new process in place for this exact reason.
Former teammates had burned out from not understanding development, but at the same time expecting the world.
Our process was supposed to change that. They would have a say in the prioritization, skin in the game, so they’d see the trade-offs, right?
I look at the clock. I have 20 minutes before a string of early morning meetings. Better do the garbage.
The mornings are chaotic, but the afternoons allow for deep work while the Western hemisphere sleeps.
Trade-offs.
My mind wanders back to the problem. Eyes wide open. We can’t do everything.
Something wasn’t clicking.
We were back at square one. Some new teammates, but it felt like we were repeating the same mistakes.
No matter how we involved them in the prioritization process.
No matter how much I emphasized the reality that tough choices had to be made.
I could even show the data: incoming versus completed tickets. We couldn't do everything.
Yet, here we were again, asking for updates on tickets that hadn’t been prioritized.
Trade-offs.
We can’t do it all. We have limited resources. Prioritizing this customer’s ticket means another customer’s ticket will have to wait.
A tug-of-choices.
What will we say no to?
What will we say “not now” to?
Every request comes with a price.
Every yes hides a no.
Trade-offs.