you are watching fun fun function I
would like to talk a little bit about
the word focus today not only focus in
itself but how we talk about focus focus
is a very popular word in general but
especially in the software industry hope
this is a word that you can safely use
because well everybody’s gonna say yes
and everybody’s gonna agree you can say
we should focus on these few things and
people will go yes we agree we should
only we should focus our efforts on on
these few things and make them good and
this video is not gonna contend that and
all I absolutely agree that we should
focus on just a few things and keep our
products simple and not be distracted by
doing lots and lots of things
and recently I’ve run into these
situations were some people around we
had I’ve said this but we should really
focus on this and I’ve agreed I thought
that wow yes we should but then I start
thinking about it and I realized that
doing the opposite of focusing is dumb
disagreeing with focusing it would be
insane imagine someone at the meeting
saying we should focus and another
person saying no no I don’t think we
should be focused I think that we should
be distracted and and spread our efforts
around like a million tiny things so
when a manager or you know someone at a
company says we should be focused they
are making a very safe statement and
this is why you’re going to find words
like focus in the mission statements of
big companies because they are words or
terminology that almost everyone agrees
with saying that we should focus is the
very opposite of controversial the only
way you could possibly be less
controversial is to say something like
we should drink water there happens to
be a word for statements like this they
are called
true
prisons the Wikipedia definition or
truism is a statement that says
something that is obviously true and
doesn’t offer anything that is new or
interesting so if I say something like
we should be focused in my team I’m not
really contributing anything to the
conversation because the team already
holds this opinion there is a simple
check to find out if something is a
truism you just take a statement and you
inverse it and you check if the inverse
statement is insane presence
collaboration peace on earth
each healthy the sinister part about
truisms is that they are they’re easy to
see that it’s a truism once we start to
look at it but it’s very easy to do us
over that and miss that something is a
truism partly because you do agree with
them and you are more friendly and less
critical of statements that you agree
with but there’s also a more subtle
thing truisms often refer to things with
high failure rates what what does that
mean well focus is a good example
because focus is in practice incredibly
hard to achieve focusing is hard even
for a single person to do you know this
if you you ever tried to just sit down
for a day and focus on getting a task
done you know it’s hard right and that
is if it’s just you a single person
involved like if it’s if it’s a team or
even an organization that’s a
atrocity of a problem so even though
people try to this they start out trying
to focus on on one or two things they
mostly fail to do that in practice which
means that we around us have all these
examples of people failing to focus
which gives the illusion that other
people around you don’t care about focus
when in reality they do it’s just that
it’s hard because
truisms often refer to things with high
failure rates that means a person can
say things like we should focus and
still seem smart even though they
haven’t really said anything at all okay
but if you’re saying focus is an
unproductive way to communicate around
these things then what is a good way of
communicating about these things I’m
going to propose a solution to this
problem but first we need to take me
so instead of focus I think that we
should talk in semantics of sacrifice
okay so I know that sounds a bit ominous
from that I explained what I mean by
sacrifice so let’s say that you have a
dream of writing a book writing a book
takes a very serious amount of time to
write so you decide that this week
you’re gonna put aside some serious time
to write as soon as you get some some
space you’re gonna sit down write what
the week goes by and you end up not
writing anything turns out that your
week is already filled up with stuff
that you’re already doing okay but there
has to be some waste right you you sit
down and you look at the week and you
try to find some crap that you can get
rid of and you find like some hours of
Netflix watching that is low-hanging
fruit that you can get rid of but you
find that there really isn’t all that
much waste in your schedule most of the
stuff that you do is good stuff it’s
valuable you started doing it for a
reason and you’ve continued doing it for
a reason the horrible conclusion is that
in order to write your book you will
have to remove something good from your
life and what’s worse is that it’s often
tied to disappointing someone as well
for instance you might have to call up a
friend and let them down by saying that
you can’t go canoeing this year there
might be bigger you might have to call
your co-founder and say that you’re
withdrawing from their little startup
that you two have been started in
creating on your spare time figuring out
which part of your week is gonna go on
the sacrificial slab that’s a very hard
and unpleasant decision and it’s also
quite a bit of unpleasant and hard work
to do the actual sacrificing making the
unpleasant call is often just the start
of these things you might have to
dissolve a company that’s
paperwork or you have to cancel tickets
and stuff like that getting out of
engagements reasonably cleanly tends to
be quite a bit of work and this is often
why sacrifices never gets made and your
week stays crammed with stuff and the
book stays unwritten software products
they are a lot like this we start out
with a blank slate we start adding
features that the customer likes but
over time the codebase becomes larger
and more interweaved
and the user interface that was so clean
from the beginning starts getting more
buttons getting more functionality and
becomes more and more complicated and
since we have to take all these
intermingle things into consideration
adding a new feature takes longer and
longer for every feature we add even
just maintaining it and fixing boxes
taking longer and longer but that’s okay
we have more money now as well so we
start adding more developers having more
developers it does help but as we add
more and more developers we start
getting higher and higher management and
communication overhead so every
developer we add gets a little bit less
benefit for every and every developer so
there’s gonna be a point where the
developer that we add actually makes
development slower this phenomena is
called Brooks law and it’s documented in
the excellent book the mythical
man-month
which is one of the best books ever
written on on software development in my
opinion you can find it in the episode
description I think most software
software product companies given enough
time and success they will reach this
point this dilemma so most companies
well when they reach this point probably
see the problem they will say that okay
we are doing too many things we need to
focus on the things that bring most
value so they identify the features that
are the ones that have the least amount
of value and they stop allocating
resources to those things but they don’t
actually remove them they just kind of
stick around to actually sacrifice
things that would mean a lot of upfront
work and dealing with the fact that a
lot of users are simply gonna be very
pissed at you even if the feature that
you are removing is incredibly
unsuccessful some of your users are
going to be reliant on it even if they
are a tiny minority they might be
hundreds or thousands or even hundreds
of thousands of of people that you are
screwing over I think that most people
can from a logical standpoint see that
it needs to be done because this is a
very small minority and they are causing
a drain on everyone else that is not
using the product and it’s messing up
the cohesive whole that the product is
but in practice actually pulling the
plug on the life support of these
features is very hard first of all this
work is not fun in any way secondly it’s
not very rewarding work either you don’t
exactly see many people getting promoted
for removing old shite from the product
most companies have a culture that
promotes people that ship things and
it’s really not focused on rewarding
people that remove old unsuccessful
features from from the codebase inside
of most companies removing stuff is not
the most career sexy move that you can
make and combined with the fact that
it’s not fun either it tends not to get
done so the features end up still being
there they’re just not getting any
proper resources so they’re basically
just left to rot and that doesn’t really
work because the features are still
draining the organization for time if
you have a look at the paintings in the
background on my wall here
they are they’re out of focus right now
my face is in focus and and your
attention is drawn to my my face but
they are they are still there so the
features that have been down prioritized
they are yeah they are on life support
which means that they don’t cost as much
as I did when they got active
development but life support is still
pretty expensive at the really sinister
thing here is that this mountain of
small things that are life support that
just trickles out there were pieces of
time and effort and and energy from your
organization each one takes a little
time the mountain of those things is
slowly going to build up because there
is no sacrificing going on in your
organization because your organization
has not learned how to do that so my
main point with all of this is that
focus without sacrifice is destructive
something has to give
just like you’re weak if you’re trying
to write a book a software product is a
finite amount of space it’s a bit more
bendy than your wheat but in the end
they are both finite you cannot just
keep adding and adding and adding things
so you need to find a sensible cohesion
and that means that you need to take out
and sacrifice things that doesn’t work
in that cohesion today we have talked
about the problem with focus we talked
about truisms which is things that are
just evidently true
and that is easy to agree with because
the opposite would be absurd such as
collaboration and peace on earth and I
eat healthy or focus and the truisms are
hard to spot because truisms often refer
to things with high failure rates which
gives the illusion that people don’t
care when in fact people just fail at
them we talk a lot about why focusing is
so hard and why you need to
focus because of the mythical man-month
which is a point of complexity and
amount of people in a software project
where we’re adding another developer is
actually going to slow down the process
and we talked about how focus without
sacrifice is destructive because you
leave around these things all over your
you know you were working week or you’re
your organization ah that just sits
there and rots you don’t spend a lot of
energy on them but they are still going
to be slowly draining you and this pile
of things is just going to keep growing
and this is hard this is really hard I
made this video partially because I
myself struggle with it so much to be
honest I think that it’s actually only a
very small part of the entire human
population that actually manages to
sacrifice things on a regular basis and
optimize their their schedules on what
they are working on and it’s even harder
for groups of people to do that together
because you have to agree on what to
sacrifice so the the amount of
organizations that can do this is
extremely small but I believe that if
you are a person that can pull
sacrificing off as a habit or if you’re
an organization as as part of your
culture that is going to help you become
immensely successful one company that I
believe does this very well is Apple and
I am convinced that it is a huge part of
why they are so vulgar ly successful
compared to almost all other companies
no matter if you love or hate Apple I
think that this is a lesson to be
learned from them I want to leave you
today with this very old clip of a Q&A
with Steve Jobs just before he came back
to Apple where a person in the audience
asks a question putting jobs on the spot
asking why Apple killed opendoc yes mr.
jobs you’re a brightening watching man
bad and clear that on several counts
you’ve discussed you don’t know what
you’re talking about I would like for
example for you to express in clear
terms how say job in any of its
incarnations addresses the ideas
embodied and opened up and when you’re
finished with that perhaps you could
tell us what you personally have been
you know you have to watch this clip
it’s just five minutes and it’s so on
point I’ve linked it in the episode
description but before you do that if
you agreed with this video and liked it
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