Unbounded Possibility Is Bad For Productivity

Being productive is hard; especially if you're working by yourself or working remotely. When you're working alone you have a lot of freedom, but that also means you have a lot of slack. No one is holding you to a schedule or deadline, and nothing is stopping you from procrastinating or getting distracted.

Even when you're focused, it can be hard to decide what to focus on, since there's often no required order in which things be done. From an objective perspective, whether I choose to call my bank today or tomorrow makes absolutely no difference. The same is true with what features I choose to implement on any given day. As long as the features get done, the order and the exact date they're completed isn't really important. Some features must be done before others for technical reasons, but others are completely unrelated and can be developed in any order. But this ambiguity is precisely the problem.

If you could work on anything at any time, what should you work on right now?

I'm going to generalize here: I don't think humans deal with unbounded possibility very well. We long for some sort of structure—or at least I do. When presented with the choice of doing any feature I want, I'm left unfocused and forced to decide—moment by moment—what features to build, which not only wastes time, but increases decision fatigue.

Lights in the Infinite Dark

Speaking with a friend earlier over the weekend, we stumbled on a maxim that I think sums up the solution pretty well:

Planning is the art of bringing order to chaos.

I've found that arbitrary deadlines, like arbitrary goals keep me motivated and focused. Without some sort of deadline or goal, I feel adrift and it's difficult to force myself to work on anything for a significant period of time. So I create artificial deadlines and goals, sometimes completely arbitrarily. Often times, I'll just pick a date on the calendar based on nothing but gut intuition, and then I change it later if necessary.

Without goals and deadlines Infinite possibility gives no guidance.

With goals and deadlines Adding goals gives you a direction.

By setting completely arbitrary deadlines and goals, I'm able to narrow down the unbounded, infinite possibility that is creating software into a simple series of steps. This isn't a new idea; tons of people do this. I just find it interesting to think of deadlines this way.

Whether your planning process involves ultra-precise scheduling, or just a notes file with some rough deadlines in it, having any sort of plan at all gives focus to your efforts and it guides you through the haze of infinite possibility.

Even if your deadlines are completely arbitrary and can be changed at will, having them is the most important thing.