15 November 05 - 21:46While your brain was otherwise engaged
To react is less effective than to respond. To respond is less effective than to anticipate.Often a crisis comes and it becomes obvious that none of the available immediate responses will be a solution. "The solution to this problem is X, but we needed to start doing it six months ago (or twenty years, or whatever)."
Next observation: "We can start doing X now, but we'll have to suffer the problem for six more months (or twenty years)." That's when you're lucky. When you're unlucky, the observation is more along the lines of, "We can start doing X now, but it won't do us any good because we'll be dead well before it starts to be effective."
We could start providing jobs and better housing to the least advantaged among us, but the cars are already burning. I could start broadening my skills to play the job market better, but my position is being moved offshore next month. We could start testing and investing in code quality, but the customer is already soured on the project.
How do we act on problems early, before they become crises ? A nifty phrase I've heard recently is "weak signals". Devote some attention to spotting weak signals and amplifying them. Of course, noise will make this a delicate task. The payoff is early intervention - think of smoke detectors.
A good way to spot weak signals is to embed your objectives in a system of values. Then weak signals will manifest as feelings that something is slightly, vaguely wrong.
If you value social justice, you will be bothered by "small" problems of discrimination or rising unemployment, even if (temporarily) these look like a small price to pay for economic prosperity. If you value quality, even relatively harmless bugs will leave you with an uneasy, niggling feeling. If you value learning for its own sake, you will move on to new skills any time you feel insufficiently challenged, etc.
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