I was 30 hours into building an amazing software platform for one of my clients. I was so excited about its potential. It had all the bells and whistles and access to more data from their sales system than you could possibly imagine.
When I committed the project to production, I couldn’t have been more pleased with myself. It was, at the time, my own magnum opus.
I presented it to my client.
Where they awestruck by my creation?
No. They hated it.
I spent 30 hours in “know it all” mode. I knew the data. I knew what I wanted to see, but I never stopped to ask the client what they wanted outside of the original idea. I built something for them for me.
In their book, “Software as a Science,” Dan Martell and friends make the argument: “You can do the right things in the wrong order and still lose.”
In that circumstance, that loss for me was unfortunate, but not catastrophic. I was able to go back and remake what my client wanted. I mean, I had to do it for free, but when I was done redoing it, the client was happy.
There’s a sometimes painful truth: it is possible to spend a lot of time building the wrong thing. In my case, I didn’t take the time to really understand the client’s requirements.
Of course, I learned a valuable lesson along the way, so I wouldn’t necessarily call it wasted time, except that I did about 50 hours of work for the price of 30. When you’re being paid to do something, it’s beneficial to know the requirements before you create the wrong magnum opus.
In short, I had learned a hard truth: Effort doesn’t always equal progress.
I have a bad habit of not writing my to do list down, but I still derive pleasure from checking things off mentally. It’s that mini-dopamine hit that comes when the checkbox has a, well, check in it.
It’s productive. That’s creates energy, especially when I’m building something cool. I was in the zone for a lot of those 30 hours. I don’t enjoy “the flow state” often so it was great to be head’s down, moving fast.
In that instance, doing wasn’t the same thing as progress.
Progress isn’t doing. Progress is moving toward the right thing. Directionless effort is just motion. Since I didn’t slow down to validate or clarify, I ended up further from the goal.
Where I thought I was building value, I was really building a monument to my own assumptions.
Go me!
The Emotional Debt of Unchecked Assumptions¹
The more time you spend engaged in something, the more it can hurt when you admit it’s wrong. Economically, it’s the sunk cost fallacy. We’ve invested a bunch of time and money, therefore we have to see “the thing” through to conclusion.
In business, you end up racking up a lot of financial and emotional debt, especially when you skip the feedback part.
That, of course, is just what I did. I had my tools polished and ready to use, I knew the data, I knew what was possible, but I never stopped to know what the client’s priorities even were. They wanted something lean, focused, and simple.
Not the Brahm’s Rhapsody #2 in G minor.
I didn’t know that because I didn’t ask.
Here’s a harsh truth: effort without validation is a liability.
Busyness Feels Safe
There’s nothing subtle about the comfort a lot of people in business feel just being busy. You can avoid the vulnerability of asking questions by convincing yourself that you’re making progress.
You can avoid the hard conversation by doubling down, saying, “I’m moving fast,” while not asking, “Am I moving fast in the right direction?”
Blind effort hides our fear of being wrong. It’s also where pride masquerades as productivity.
I wish I could say I’m consistent in doing things differently, but I repeated the same mistake with a smaller project and a different client just a few days ago. He wanted what ended up being nothing more than a bullet-point list of how to do something. I gave him a 25-page document outlining all the different ways something could be done, 99% of which he would never use.
Oops.
Where I thought I was building value, I was really building a monument to my own assumptions.
So, let me give myself some practical advice to follow. Maybe this will resonate with you. Before I build or write anything whether software, business process document, or a consulting recommendation, I need to ask three simple questions:
- Do I understand the problem clearly? To be fair, this one isn’t usually the issue, but can be really problematic if you don’t understand this one before getting started.
- Have I heard what the other person needs in their own words? This is almost always where I go wrong.
- Am I creating to serve or to impress? Vanity, anyone?
If I can’t answer all three of these, I’m really not ready to start building.
This Happens Everywhere
We’ve already touched on the fact that this isn’t isolated to software and process development.
- It happens when you’re working 80 hours a week in a job you know you should leave.
- It happens when you throw yourself into organizing the house, hoping it will fix tension in your relationship.
- My personal demon; it happens when you keep running harder in a race you never wanted to be in.
It sounds like I’m vilifying effort. Effort’s not bad. Effort’s required to move anything forward. When it’s misdirected, however, it becomes a kind of show — impressive movements that don’t get you anywhere.
Hobbies are great effort just for the sake of effort, but if you’re building toward something, the real work isn’t in the building. It’s in slowing down to make sure you’re building the right thing.
Sometimes, you have to ask questions that might feel awkward to clarify the conversation. Then, you have to be humble enough to let go of the version of success you had in your head.
Progress, then, is measured in alignment and the baby steps in the right direction, not in effort.
When you’re building something, time invested doesn’t always equate to value created. So, the next time you’re running as fast as you can, give yourself permission to stop and make sure you’re running the right direction.
¹ Let me be an apologetic for my own writing. I know that effort that seems aimless is almost always required to figure out both what the end goal is and where it lives. Progress is never a straight line. Where we run into trouble is when we persist down a path that we know is wrong but choose not to make course corrections because of pride.
