Must. Be. Efficient. Beep. Boop.
My previous job as a semiconductor fab engineer came with a lot of procedures and checklists. They're great because they both teach and remind people the proper way to do things, ensuring the task is done the same way, the best way, the safest way, the most efficient way, and the properly ordered way every time. This strategy minimizes variation in the task, in turn minimizing the amount of troubleshooting, redos, and issues later on. Awesome!
The job also came with a lot of tasks. My to-do list was well over 500 non-trivial items when including projects broken down into individual subtasks, making it incredibly important that I was efficient with my time and energy throughout the workday. This may take the form of delegation, prioritization, and, you guessed it, procedures that allowed me to just do and not think.
Everything became procedurized at work. Making a change to a document? Let me walk through my change-a-document procedure and checklist. Updating a tool setting? I need to follow my change-a-tool-setting procedure. This actually worked very well across the board—I missed fewer things, and things I did miss got added so they aren't missed in the future. The procedures only got longer, never shorter; they were always followed, never skipped. It also outsourced my "hmm, what exactly do I need to do and check again?" thinking process to a numbered list on my computer, freeing up valuable brain space for actual thinking. All of this increased my efficiency at work. I saw the number of tasks I did go up over time and the number of redos go down over time. (The number of tasks going up isn't Goodharting—these actually need to be done and I'm not making them up.) I got told I'm a workhorse and that I'm doing a good job. I looked at my procedures and beamed with pride. My equipment performance improved and made my life easier. I became hooked on the positive reinforcement and kept pushing.
Wait a second... if this works so well at work, maybe it can work just as well at home!
Wrong. Well, kind of. My procedure obsession has bled into my personal life, resulting in a bunch of routines and procedures (see Appendix I for details) that are great and help me get things done more quickly and without as much mental effort:
But even though these have helped certain aspects of my life, I've become less capable of operating without a procedure as a result. Like a dumb robot that's programmed to only do a few things super well and struggles with a novel request or SpongeBob when Squilliam returns and he only knows about fine dining and breathing. I resort to procedurization any time I feel inefficient with something or want to improve its quality, further eroding my ability to improvise on a regular basis.
What has this cost me? Do I have a worse working memory because I write everything down instead of keeping it in my head? It sure seems like I forget a lot if I don't immediately write it down. It's certainly cost me the spontaneity that I used to have; I now have rigid schedules when I get home, a slave to Focusmate sessions and my ever-growing to-do list of stuff I have to do. It's cost me flexibility; I now have to know roughly when and where things are happening on trips, during the day, and so on, lest we miss something or do something wrong. Or maybe I'm just making up boogeymen in my mind and it'll all be fine.
I have this (what I think is obvious, but maybe not talked about) pet theory that people often change to become more like what their job demands of them. It's hard not to become more like something that takes up half of your waking hours! It's also probably more beneficial to change towards the job personality so there's no having to choose between two personas and there's an extra eight hours of practice a day and, in theory, you get more rewarded the more you are the character you're expected to play. (There's also the explanation that jobs select for certain types of people and vice versa, so it's some sort of self-reinforcing feedback loop.)
Take human resources (HR). They can often see things in black and white: was a rule broken or not? If yes, do X. If not, do Y. Seeing things in shades of grey and with the necessary context can be a struggle. Does this transfer to their personal lives? If their partner does something "wrong", do they consider all the information before deciding it's wrong, or do they simply plug it into their human_resources_mind program and check the output? While I doubt it's that black-and-white, I suspect they're more likely to behave in the black-and-white manner than they were before they started working there. Do lawyers argue at home? Do teachers teach and correct behavior of their friends? Do therapists try to help their partners despite them not asking for it?
This is bad. So many jobs require nuance and being quick on your feet, not resorting to documents or a standard operating procedure. This is even worse for personal lives. I've become so rigid that I've taken to scheduling quality time on the calendar with my partner so that I ensure I can fit it into my busy schedule. Even going to grab a late-night ice cream is enough to throw me off my routine—my mind is not present and distracted by the things that I had mentally scheduled for that time and was pulled away from, ruining the experience for everyone involved.
Like the quote "strong opinions, weakly held", I need to be nimble, or live by the cousin quote "strong schedule, weakly held". The procedures are good for what they accomplish, but not for their own sake. I need to be more willing to skip the things that don't matter and trim off the fat when it's not adding value. I need to practice spontaneity again and enjoy it...wait, that's another procedure!
My partner and I discuss the following topics (which was written by Claude based on input from me, hence the blockquote):
- Roses and thorns: Each person shares one high and one low from the week. No problem-solving, just listening. Sets the tone and makes sure you're both actually caught up on each other's lives.
- Anything on your mind: Open floor — grievances, things you've been meaning to bring up, appreciations, whatever. This is the pressure valve. Having a scheduled slot for this prevents things from festering.
- Plan the week: Look at both calendars together. Schedule the two cooking nights, the date night, and any logistics (who's doing what chores, any commitments coming up). Concrete and brief.
- Relationship tasks: A short standing checklist — bills, any upcoming events to plan for, family obligations, whatever recurs for you two. Keep an actual shared list so you're not trying to remember it mid-meeting.
As soon as I walk in the door I:
My partner and I have established code words in an effort to quickly compress a bunch of words into one: