Things I Think About: Task Tracking Trials and Trust

There are a myriad of options out there for managing tasks and time management at the individual/personal level. David Allen's "GTD" system is one used by my company, but there are dozens of websites with ideas. One of my favorite talks on the subject is by the "Last Lecture" YouTube star, Randy Pausch. It's an interesting area, and one where I continue to iterate.

The struggle I've had is in finding the appropriate balance between detail and efficiency when managing tasks owned by others. Let's be clear here: we may not have the monkey with any of these tasks, but we do own the overall success of the project, and we are accountable when the task owner  misses a task or gets offtrack with a project. This is task management, executive-style.

Let's define some possible cases are the far end of each spectrum. On the one hand, we can manage the tasks of others as we manage our own tasks - for me, this means tracking individual tasks using lists with checkboxes, divided and sorted by subject matter. It's also extremely time intensive and wasteful whenever a task happens on track: there's a cost of my time in monitoring the task, my time in sending a "ping" of some form about it, their time in replying, and my time in checking the box off. This isn't sustainable across the board.

On the other hand, we can check in at occasional (perhaps weekly) checkpoints on status and if work efforts are on track - relying more on the other person's task tracking. This doesn't take a lot of time, but it tends to stay at the project level (unless it's a 1-2-1 planning meeting), and it's not great at mitigating risk. Let's dig into why:

• Wastes time for the larger group if you get too detailed
• Doesn't allow easy opportunities to check-back on late tasks
• Allows updates like "I didn't get to this, will get to it today/tomorrow.
• Doesn't account for issues or tasks that the person might have forgotten.

In my work as a project manager, I've found that we need a system that allows for a middle ground of the two approaches above, and can be dialed up or down depending on the urgency of the project and the past performance of the task owner. I'm still working on ideas about how to dial up and down seamlessly.

A song stuck in my head throughout Thanksgiving

Amid The Stereotypes, Some Facts About Millennials : NPR

Amid The Stereotypes, Some Facts About Millennials : NPR: A review of data shows that millennials do have characteristics that set them apart. Unlike their parents' generation, millennials are ushering in an age when minorities will lead the U.S. population. Many of them aren't too keen on marrying early. They are the most educated generation — but even so, a majority remains undereducated. And since they entered the workforce in the midst of a sluggish economy, many also remain underemployed.

How Medical Care Is Being Corrupted - NYTimes.com

How Medical Care Is Being Corrupted - NYTimes.com: For example, doctors are rewarded for keeping their patients’ cholesterol and blood pressure below certain target levels. For some patients, this is good medicine, but for others the benefits may not outweigh the risks. Treatment with drugs such as statins can cause significant side effects, including muscle pain and increased risk of diabetes. Blood-pressure therapy to meet an imposed target may lead to increased falls and fractures in older patients.

I have an irrational love of wind turbines

Source

God of Loss

Why America Is A Lousy Puppeteer - David F. Schmitz - POLITICO Magazine

Why America Is A Lousy Puppeteer - David F. Schmitz - POLITICO Magazine: The outcome is that a policy designed to modernize and Westernize countries instead only increases instability and unrest, leading to political polarization and anti-American sentiment. This is what the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1990s termed “blowback,” the unintended political consequences that result when the United States shores up unpopular and repressive regimes that help foster and fuel radical nationalist movements, and bring to power the exact forms of government the United States ostensibly seeks to prevent.

A favorite routine

In middle school, I set my alarm clock to the "radio" setting and woke up each day at 7:00 AM exactly to the sounds of "Morning Edition" on NPR and Bob Edwards's trip through the minute long sound clips. The hosts after him never got it quite right, and that voice took me through the start of the Iraq War until his reassignment by NPR. It was my favorite way to wake up.

Halbig

Currently vacationing on the coast of SC, but thinking about the decision just passed down by three judges on the DC Court of Appeals in this case.

Brief background:

1. The intention of the ACA was to spread healthcare coverage
2. The intended mechanism of this was to be state-based insurance exchanges
3. The federal government got a rude surprise when many states refused to set up their exchanges, instead choosing to rely on a federal system.
4. This case alleges that because the law's text says subsidies are only for exchanges "established by the State," all of the states on the federal system shouldn't get subsidies, and will see healthcare prices spike.

Proponents of the law are saying the difference is a "typo," which is a strong political message but doesn't quite represent the intention of the gov't to give sweeteners for the states to set up their own exchanges. However, the Obama administratoin most certainly did not intend to remove subsidies via a bait-and-switch, which is how people will feel when this challenge goes through.

So here's the predicament: the law as it stands might be broken. To fix it would require congressional action, but the GOP House is in no mood to help fix this part of the law, since they are so against the entire thing. As a result, the nation could be stuck under a broken law not reflecting the intentions of the drafters.

But what's the alternative, besides drafting well in the first place? If our government can't continue policies faithful to the original intent of laws, the shouldn't be a way to do an end run around it. Laws need to say the right thing.

I don't have an answer, but it is a little scary.

Unconscious bias study: Sexism and racism in America is a product of favoritism, not hatred.

Unconscious bias study: Sexism and racism in America is a product of favoritism, not hatred.: A new review of studies on discrimination by the University of Washington’s Tony Greenwald and U.C. Santa Cruz’s Thomas Pettigrew makes the succinct case that discrimination in the United States is not primarily a product of overt hatred for others, but rather simple preferences for people like ourselves. In a review of five decades of psychological research, they found that while most researchers defined prejudice as an expression of hostility, the more pervasive form of bigotry in the United States comes from people who favor, admire, and trust people of their own race, gender, age, religion, or parenting status. Even people who share our birthdays can catch a break. That means that—to take just one example—sexist bias isn’t largely perpetuated by people who hate women. It’s furthered by men who just particularly like other men.

Awesome combination of motion capture and juggling.

Torque starter from enra on Vimeo.

Why the 9/11 Museum Gift Shop Offends Us -- Science of Us

Why the 9/11 Museum Gift Shop Offends Us -- Science of Us: Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, has offered a useful vocabulary for understanding these issues. He distinguishes between three kinds of exchanges. First are routine trade-offs, in which one swaps one “secular” value or entity for another — by, say, paying money (the most secular good we have) for an iPad or some other commodity. Second are tragic trade-offs, in which “sacred” or irreplaceable entities are weighed against each other — national security or citizen privacy? Sophie’s older child or her younger one? Then you have taboo trade-offs, in which a secular value is paired with a sacred one. People tend to throw prostitution into this category, which is why it incites such fierce debate.

What people see in the 9/11 gift shop is a taboo trade-off. On one side of the exchange is cash, and on the other is not just a mug or a hoodie but something much larger.



These items stand in for all the suffering they commemorate. The equation is quite simple: “They’re making money off my dead son,” one man told the Washington Post.