Don’t Make Fire Where There is Smoke
You know that feeling. That nagging sense that things could be more efficient. It’s an instinct that helped you move from individual contributor to manager. The clunky process, a long-ignored bug, or a messy line of code—and your inner engineer starts buzzing with ideas.
Early in my career, I jumped onto every problem I spotted. I'd create a plan, and try to rally a team around my vision for a better way. And mostly I got…frustrated. I kept seeing early signs of problems like smoke in the air and feeling like a I needed to act as if it was already an urgent fire. Not everyone saw the problem the way I did, or if they did, they realized it wasn’t a real fire.
As I’ve grown as a manager, I've learned to appreciate the power of slow productivity.
As Cal Newport writes in his book of the same name: "Strive to reduce your obligations to the point where you can easily imagine accomplishing them with time to spare. Leverage this reduced load to more fully embrace and advance the small number of projects that matter most."
True progress isn’t about tackling every problem but rather focusing on the things you’ve prioritized. We can’t take on every issue, and we shouldn’t try to. Just like we manage our teams with WIP (Work in Progress) limits to ensure they deliver valuable work, we need to manage our own WIP as managers.
So… should I just ignore problems?
No! And if you’re like me your brain won’t let you. Instead of immediately jumping into action, ask yourself a few key questions:
Is this a priority? You have a set of core responsibilities and goals. Is this problem directly aligned with one of those? If it’s not, is it blocking progress or urgently being brought up by team members?
Can you fix this by yourself? Can you fix it yourself in a small, low-effort way, or does it require others to be involved? If it requires others, is there capacity to engage with this problem?
What will you put down? This is the most crucial question. We have finite time and energy. Every new problem you pick up means you have to put something else down. Is this new issue important enough to stop what you're already doing?
When will you have space for this? Not every inefficiency needs to be solved today. But simply saying "I'll deal with it later" can leave you feeling more frustrated than ever. Instead, write it down and set a timeframe to revisit it: next week, next month, or next year. By putting a timeframe on it, you give your brain permission to put that problem down and go back to focusing on the work in front of you.
Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is let a problem simmer. Master your managerial WIP, and you'll find yourself more focused, less frustrated, and more effective.
