Clarity

What are you doing, and why are you doing it?

Although this sounds like a trivial, almost useless question, if you keep it running as a “background daemon” in your head, it can help you see through the distractions of useless meetings, pointless projects and confused priorities. If you know what the real purpose of your company, product or team is, you can orient your work toward those goals, instead of being reactive to short-term interruptions and obstacles.

Look at it this way:

• If your entire backlog were suddenly finished, what would come next?

• Are you working on a continual stream of tech debt, or growing a product’s usefulness and business value? Do you care which it is?

• Is what you’re working on something that could just be bought or run in a cloud service? Has anyone checked lately?

Sometimes these are uncomfortable questions, but hiding from reality isn’t a great strategy. Just keep asking “What am I doing, and why am I doing it?” This clarity is more important than technical skills. You can’t learn every language, implement every idea, or satisfy all customers, but if you can see the road ahead of you clearly, you can pick the right things to focus on.