Story Time
Complexity is natural. Simplicity requires effort.
The mind wanders uncontrolled. It consumes information at an unsustainable rate. This information comes from multiple sources: emails, LinkedIn, TikTok, friends and family.
Most of this information is not important. It’s just there. It has nothing to do with what you are doing at the time you consume it. The mind also produces information. We call this type of information “thoughts”. In fact, the vast majority of the information we consume are thoughts.
Think about the last time you read a book. Were you reading? Or were you thinking? What about while watching TV? In the middle of a conversation? Sure, some of us are more present than others. But probably less than we actually think we are.
Simplicity is a process of reduction. I simplify a sentence by reducing it to the least possible words necessary. Sometimes I succeed.
Simplicity requires effort.
A Not-So-Simple Story
Stories are a useful tool for explaining concepts. I wrote the following story to explain everything I wrote above.
This story is about a man named Rodger. You might relate to this story. It’s pretty much my life. This story should help you understand why simplicity matters in this over-informed world, and the effort it takes to maintain it.
Rodger Tries to Get Organized
Rodger has a lot going on. He has a stressful corporate job, a family with three kids, and a few different side hustles. He has hundreds of tasks living in his head. He struggles to stay on top of these tasks.
Rodger wants to get organized. He starts by writing down tasks in a notebook before he goes to bed each night. He writes down tasks that he wants to accomplish the next day. He leaves this notebook by his bed so that he won’t forget to write tasks in it each night.
Rodger adds tasks to his calendar each morning before he goes to work as a reminder. He is motivated by the potential for productivity. He feels a release of stress and experiences a sense of peace.
The next day, Rodger completes some of the tasks on his list, but not all. He is often interrupted by newer and more urgent tasks at work. He realizes that he needs a place to record these tasks, since his notebook is next to his bed at home.
He opens up a Google doc and starts a new list. He knows there might be a better tool out there, but he doesn’t have the time to research which one is best. “At least I’m writing them down,” he thinks to himself.
That night Rodger writes down his tasks for the next day in his notebook. He remembers that he had some tasks he wrote down in his Google doc at the office. But it’s late and he doesn’t want to look at a screen before bed.
He decides to keep two lists. One to capture the tasks at the end of the day and one for the office. He goes to sleep, satisfied with his new system.
The next day at the office is very busy. There is a lot to do and Rodger needs to make sure he writes it all down. He tries to find the Google doc he created the day before, but he can’t seem to find it. He realizes he never titled the doc. He is too stressed to try to find it, so he creates a new one.
He creates a third list, but this time with Google sheets. He figures it’s a better tool for tracking tasks because he can add columns like “status” and “due date”.
“I’ll just find the Google Doc later and transfer the tasks to the new Google sheet when I have time” he says to himself out loud, looking around to see if anybody heard him talking to himself.
Rodger is now managing three different lists. He has created three lists in one week. At this rate he’ll have twelve lists in one month.
Author’s Notes
That’s the end of Rodger’s story. I would keep going but writing that story was starting to stress me out. Poor Rodger.
It doesn’t take much for information to turn into chaos. I need a simple system in my life to help me manage my information.
A simple system really comes down to:
Deciding what matters (Just a few things)
Capturing information that is relevant to those things
Ignoring the rest (or storing somewhere else for later)
Establishing and maintaining this simplicity requires effort.
Rodger at Scale
Did you think Rodger’s life sounded stressful? Imagine 100 people just like Rodger. Some people call such a thing a “company.”
A company is a collection of uncontrolled wandering minds. I will use the power of story telling once more to explain what I mean.
Case Study: Wandering Minds
A group of 100 people came together. They all enjoy keeping track of their tasks on a list. They decide to start an organization where they will create tasks together. Let us un-ironically call this organization “Wandering Minds.”
Wandering Minds markets themselves as a “productivity company”. They promote their ability to create tasks at an unprecedented rate. Everyone at Wandering Minds has their own task list. Some share a task list. Some contribute to multiple task lists.
There are a few wealthy people observing Wandering Minds. They are impressed by their massive potential for productivity.
“We’ve never seen a task list this big!” shouts one of them with excitement. The wealthy few decide to give Wandering Minds a substantial amount of money in exchange for an ability to add tasks to their list. Wandering Minds agrees.
One month later Jerry, a lead task creator at the company, meets with the wealthy people. Jerry is excited to share that the organization is creating 10 times the amount of tasks thanks to their investment.
“That’s incredible news.” says Sarah, one of the wealthy people. She pauses, and then her face becomes curious. She continues:
“I did want to ask you something, Jerry. I ran out of clothes this morning. That’s why I’m wearing pajamas right now. I had to start a load of laundry. I thought my laundry would be done a week ago. That’s when I added it to your task list. Did someone miss it?”
“I’m so sorry, Sarah. That shouldn’t have happened,” Jerry responded, and then frowned. “I’m going to find out what happened and will get back to you ASAP!”
Jerry goes back to the Wandering Minds Office. He asks Carl, the first person he sees: ”Have you seen any laundry tasks lately?”
Carl, at his desk responds:
“Oh sure. I’ve seen plenty of laundry tasks. I’ve created at least three laundry tasks for myself.”
“Did you see one from Sarah? She’s one of the wealthy people”
“Probably not. I can’t even find most of my own tasks. There are over 5000 task lists at this organization.”
“Well how do we know if we are getting any of these tasks done?!”
“No idea. I still haven’t done my laundry!”
Jerry realizes that Wandering Minds has a big problem. He has no idea how many tasks there are. Nor does he know if any of them are completed. Someone needs to organize all of Wandering Mind’s tasks to help them answer these questions.
This is a daunting task on its own. He assigns someone in the organization to this daunting task, and gives them the title of “daunting task person”, or “da-ta person” for short.
Jerry tells the da-ta person: “We only need to know two things:”
How many tasks we’ve created.
How many tasks we’ve completed.
The da-ta person nods and gets to work. He starts going through some boxes. He scans through list after list, keeping two tallies: one for the tasks and one for the completed tasks.
After awhile the da-ta person gets confused. He loses count and has to start over at least three times.
“I could’ve sworn I already saw this task.” He thinks to himself.
“Or maybe ‘Finish Proposal*’* is a separate task from ‘Finish Proposal for James’?”
Some of the other task creators watch the da-ta person sifting through boxes and wonder, “what does that guy do? Why isn’t he creating any tasks?”
A week later the da-ta person goes back to Jerry.
“I have the numbers you are looking for”
“Excellent!”
“We have created either 393, 209 tasks or 899, 231 tasks. Or maybe something in between those two numbers”
“What do you mean?” Jerry is perplexed.
“Well we’ve identified about 462, 298 tasks that may or may not be the same task. Oh and I don’t think anyone is marking whether they’ve completed these tasks so as of now I can tell you we’ve completed 5 tasks. But I only know that because 3 people at lunch told me.”
Understanding The Problem
I intend to connect these stories to data. This is indeed a data blog.
The stories in this post should explain why most problems in data are not actually data problems. They are people problems.
Your company may not be making frivolous to-do lists, but that’s not the point. Your company is a group of people. And as we learned in this post, people are uncontrolled information-producing (and consuming) machines.
Is your company experiencing data issues? Are people making data-driven decisions? Do they trust the data?
You may have technical answers to these questions. But before you go there, ask yourself the following:
What does my company do?
How do we do it?
If it’s difficult to answer these questions, then you likely have a data problem.
Answering these questions simply can be very difficult. It requires effort. It requires even more effort to maintain that simplicity. But the information in our lives won’t serve us if we don’t put make that effort.