This is a transcript of episode 287 of the Troubleshooting Agile podcast with Jeffrey Fredrick and Douglas Squirrel.
Is your tech team always rushing, but never improving? They may have “hurry sickness.”
Listen to the episode on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
Hurry Sickness
Listen to this section at 00:14
Squirrel: Welcome back to Troubleshooting Agile. Hi there, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Hi, Squirrel.
Squirrel: So you were telling me about something I really wanted to hear more about because I don’t understand it. And it’s called hurry sickness. And that’s like, hurry. Maybe I should say it really fast- hurry-sickness! Yeah. So if you’re feeling hurried and sick, is that what it is? What is it?
Jeffrey: No, it’s not quite that, apparently, and this is I’ll say this is some a new phrase for me as well, apparently it’s a phrase to describe people feeling constantly under pressure, like they need to make the most of every moment because there’s so much to get done. Also like time urgency, constant time urgency.
Squirrel: And oh yeah, like every startup founder I’ve ever met.
Jeffrey: Hahaha, that’s right. But the thing is, something I came across today, and it was amusing. I had a colleague I was talking to, and he told me that there’s this Hungarian phrase, which means something like, ‘I don’t have time to get on the bike,’ so you can imagine someone pushing a bike down the street, and you’re like, ‘well, why don’t you get on it? It’ll be faster.’ It’s like, ‘oh, I don’t have time for that.’
Squirrel: Ahhh! I get it. Okay, I was confused, but it’s like you have a bike with you. And the question is, ‘why don’t you use the bike?’ Or maybe you’re even pushing a car, ‘why don’t you get in the car?’ That’s the idea, right?
Jeffrey: Yeah, exactly. One, there’s the behavior of like not taking the time to make things better. And then there’s the psychological thing that prevents you from doing it. And I think that’s what identifies hurry sickness, is that feeling. It just feels like, ‘oh, there’s no change possible, because I need to be doing all of these things.’ What struck me about this, and why I thought it might be a good topic, is that this is a really common problem.
Jeffrey: Certainly I talk to people, and they’re often saying about how busy they are. In fact, that feels like that’s like the socially acceptable response now. ‘Well, how are you?’ ‘I’m really busy,’ which is probably a sign of something not quite right in our culture. And at the same time-
Squirrel: Imagine giving the opposite response. ‘Oh yeah, I’m really lazy. Nothing’s happening. I’ve just been lying around all day.’
Jeffrey: Well, it’s great that you say lazy is the opposite! As opposed to ‘no actually, I actually have plenty of free time because I’ve really planned my time well, I’ve really prioritized and now, so I have Slack.’ But that’s not where our mind goes. It feels normal to be busy.
Squirrel: And I think there may be some cultural element to this, because there are cultures in which giving that response would be more acceptable. But the US and the UK particularly seem to have more of this busy culture. And of course, you’re in the US, and I’m in the UK. What is it, I think it’s the Swedes who have fika, where they take a break in the middle of the day? We know Spanish-speaking countries have siesta. There are countries in which, and cultures in which, taking a break or renewing yourself is taken more seriously. I think this may be cultural. I’d be interested to hear from listeners who have any evidence on this.
Jeffrey: Yeah, absolutely. And I’d be especially interested to hear about how it comes into the business culture, because that was the context we were discussing it. The context in part was, ‘well, we’re at kind of the boundary of our OKR process,’ you know, kind of starting off a new one. But part of our process normally is to say, ‘well, what are the lessons learned from last quarter?’ But there’s also this tension that comes up about like, ‘well, do we have time to go spend thinking about lessons learned when we have to get started on all this stuff?’
Jeffrey: There’s this pressure about what we want to accomplish, and the temptation is to let go and let slide those things that focus on learning and improvement. And I think it’s because it’s not certain what the benefit will be. Whereas the idea that, ‘well, I can go and do something now that I know needs to get done,’ feels very satisfying.
Squirrel: Yeah. It gives an immediate payoff.
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Near Enemies
Listen to this section at 04:20
Squirrel: That’s right. And there’s actually a real danger here. You taught me long ago about a concept called near enemies. I think this is one we should try to put in the show notes, if we can find a good link for it. It’s a Buddhist idea. Is that right?
Jeffrey: Yeah. That’s right. Exactly. The idea is, you have a virtue, but then there’s a near enemy, is the thing that masquerades as that virtue, but isn’t that virtue. So something like maybe compassion, and instead you’re like, ‘well, it’s the near enemy is pity.’ So compassion would be like, you know, ‘you suffer, I suffer, we have compassion for that.’ But pity is like, ‘oh, you suffer. That’s too bad for you. I feel sorry for you.’ That’s not quite the same thing as compassion.
Squirrel: Exactly. And there’s kind of a near enemy here. I’m not sure where the virtue is, but the near enemy is, I guess, the virtue of taking action in a real emergency. So imagine that bike situation and imagine there’s a bike thief who’s coming after you on foot, and you have a kickstand and a pannier to put on your bike, and the brake is on and maybe a bunch of other things. And the police station is 15 meters away. It would probably be good to push your bike really fast to the police station to avoid the bike thief.
Squirrel: And my hypothesis is that we all evolved in environments in which bike thieves, lions and other dangers were present. And so I think our brains evolved in such a way that taking actions that are suboptimal in the long run to preserve your life in the short run, made a heck of a lot of sense! And the people who didn’t do that stuff got eaten by lions, so they’re not around. And the problem is that your tech team is probably not about to be eaten by a lion.
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Squirrel: So if your engineers are reacting in a way that deprioritizes improvements that are right there in front of them, that are relatively near term, but not immediate, then you might suspect that they’re falling victim to this hurry sickness. To this, what is the Hungarian phrase? I don’t have time to push the bike? I don’t have time to get on the bike!
Jeffrey: Yeah, exactly. And I think the part that’s challenging is that there are times, like you say, when there is real value in getting something done quickly. Getting something done today. I think that in a sense, when you have had some success with that, gotten some value out of, ‘hey, well, maybe we can get something done, and we can get this in front of clients, and we can get feedback, and we can learn,’ and there’s kind of this idea of being very rapidly iterating. Once you’ve had success with that, then it becomes tempting, I think, to continue on that. And it’s not like your motivation is bad, and it’s not like what you’re describing isn’t real as a possibility. But it’s hard, I think, to have balance, to say, ‘do we have the right proportion here?’
Squirrel: And I’m a big fan of rapidly iterating all the time, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t also rapidly iterate and get a lot of feedback, and also reflect on how to improve and take advantage of things that are in front of you. You know, I evaluate companies all the time, and I evaluate them, and they say, ‘yeah, we just didn’t have time to update this library that has a security vulnerability.’ And I think, ‘yeah, that’s like saying, you know, my lock is busted on my front door, but I don’t have time to call the locksmith. I’ll just leave for work and hope nobody steals anything.’ That’s optimization that isn’t a real optimization. You’re not getting better iterations if you get all your data stolen or taken by ransomware artists.
Jeffrey: And the thing is, it might be reasonable for a day, like I might say, ‘you know, I’m not going to call the locksmith today.’ And I think that’s reasonable! But the question is, if it’s a week from now and I still haven’t called the locksmith, maybe I need to say I have a problem.
Squirrel: Yep! So, we always like to give specific actions for our listeners to follow. So if you’re encountering this kind of always short turn thinking, it’s not just once, because I’m a big fan of taking a little crunch and a little push and getting something done for a customer so that you show real value. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a team that’s sustained, under pressure. It’s been pushing the bike for miles and miles and miles. And there’s a bike that’s right there. Like let’s upgrade the database. Let’s add some tests. Let’s improve. Let’s meet some customers.
Squirrel: There was a debate, I forgot this, but there was a debate on my forum, stimulated by a very well-meaning, very smart CEO who I just thought was missing the boat. He said, ‘you know, I’ve got engineers who are doing a really great job. I’ve got product owners who give them really great information about the customers. They’re not really experts on the customers. They’re not in the customer group. And, Squirrel, you keep saying this strange thing to me. You say they should go on sales calls, and they should answer customer service questions and things like that. Wouldn’t that take them away from writing code, which they’re already doing really well?’.
Squirrel: That was a perfect example of having a bike right there. It’s a small company, it’s easy for those engineers to meet customers. It would have a very near time, but not immediate payoff if engineers met customers, and he couldn’t see it! And I think I got him at least thinking about it. After our debate on the Squirrel Squadron forum, which I really enjoyed. But it’s sometimes very difficult to get people that I’m working with. To even have a look at their calendars to clear time, so that they would then have time to think about clearing their calendars.
Jeffrey: Right!
Squirrel: Jeffrey, you’ve seen me do this. Yeah.
Too Busy to Become Less Busy
Listen to this section at 10:22
Jeffrey: Yeah, and it’s ironic because I know you experience clients, so I’ve worked with you, and I’ve seen you clear up time on people’s calendars, and suddenly they’re much less busy. But then you have people who say, ‘look, I don’t have time to work with you, Squirrel, because I’m so busy.’ And it’s like, probably the first thing you would do is help them have more time.
Squirrel: Precisely. It would take some investment of spending a little time with me getting on the bike. Changing what’s in your calendar, and maybe creating some short term pain of disappointing some people about having too much on your calendar. And this happens to tech teams. This happens to people who are not in technology.
Squirrel: It’s a very common challenge to do this, short term optimization for a long time. I was leading toward this, I think the thing that our, our listeners might look out for is someone who’s making the push the bike choice, not just today, not tomorrow, but for days and days, for weeks and weeks, for months and months. And if you see that consistent pattern, that’s the time to step in and to say something like, ‘hey, maybe you can get some help here clearing your calendar,’ ‘maybe you could disappoint one customer, and maybe they’ll even leave us, but we’ll get the team on track so that we aren’t maintaining two versions of our product. We’ll have just one.’ That’s the sort of thing that our listeners might do. What do you think?
Jeffrey: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the question of saying, ‘what can we do to make the situation better?’ You have to be asking that. To me, that’s absolutely essential. And if you say, ‘well, we don’t have time to get better, ever,’ then you’re never going to get better! And that’s going to be a failure. And the thing about this topic, and I think I want to come back to this for a moment, is that there are times where you are legitimately under pressure for some period of time.
And I think it’s worth saying, if you believe that that’s the case, it’s still worth saying, ‘what are we going to do to compensate for that? What’s going to change? What are we going to? What are we going to make different to accommodate the fact that we’re under tremendous pressure right now?’ And I know, Squirrel, you personally do a good job of this when you know that you have a very pressured time, you look to make adjustments to say, ‘what am I going to do different to recuperate and recover from this?’ As opposed to saying, ‘well, I’m going to continue until I collapse.’
Squirrel: I do my best. I’m having a tough time right now, but I appreciate your kind words about it, Jeffrey. I do try to book rest days with no client calls and things like that. But Jeffrey, let’s leave our listeners with one more thought, which you shared with me. You actually use a spreadsheet with your family. And I think that’s a very interesting approach. You might share, if you’re willing to, that helps you to do a better job than me, frankly.
Jeffrey: Yeah. So my older daughter and I, we have a weekly check in. We kind of describe it this way, we have personal systems, that we’re trying to do and implement just for our own selves and sanity. And the check in is kind of a moment of accountability. One of the things I’ve been tracking for a couple of months now is my sleep. So how much sleep do I get a night? And you, Squirrel, know that my sleep schedule is a bit odd. I’m based in California, but my four day a week job is in Europe, so I get up at 4:30 in the morning to start calls at 5 a.m. every day. And it’s always tempting to stay up a little bit later at night and cheat and get a little more time with the family or friends or whatever and any given night that might be okay. But over time, how am I doing?
Jeffrey: So I have this spreadsheet where once a week, I fill it in and look at the facts and say, ‘how am I doing? Am I getting enough sleep, among other things.’ And that becomes a way to kind of hold myself accountable. ‘Okay, maybe this week was hard,’ but if I look at it and say, ‘okay, this week I was a little bit short, and last week I was short, and the week before I was short. Okay, it’s been 3 or 4 weeks. Maybe it’s been a month since I had the right amount of sleep. Okay, that’s clearly a sign that I’m not living the way I want. I need to make a change.’
Squirrel: You’ve been pushing the bike for miles.
Jeffrey: Yeah, exactly! Yeah. I’ve been pushing this bike for far too long. Look at the spreadsheet! I have a way, I have a system in place to let me know that I’m pushing the bike, and I need to find a way to get on it. And that’s the idea, of having some sort of feedback mechanism to trigger that, to hold myself accountable. Is this really a one off emergency or have I normalized deviance? I think that’s a useful idea that other people can look for. How can I know that we’re following a sustainable process versus just you know, hurry sick pressure, pressure, pressure, all the time.
Squirrel: There we go. I think Jeffrey may be the only father in the whole world who holds one-on-ones with his daughter. But they seem to be effective, so maybe I’ll try something similar with my family. And we’d sure encourage listeners to tell us their struggles with hurry sickness, and pushing the bike. Do you agree with us? Do you think that this is something you’d like to do, but you have trouble doing it? Maybe you don’t agree with us. There’s certainly some people say in the video game industry who believe in 12-hour days, seven-day weeks and crunches for many years. And they produce some of the most exciting games in the world. Are they right? Well, we’d like to hear from you. Always happy when people get in touch with us, gives us great podcast material. The other way to keep in touch, of course, is to come back next Wednesday when we’ll have another edition of Troubleshooting Agile. Thanks, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Thanks, Squirrel.