Why are you doing it?
It being your work. The work you did today or yesterday, in the standup update you gave. Why did you do it? Why are you continuing to do it?
About three years into my career my friend Erik and I were asked to drop what we were doing to help out on a project.
You see, the intranet homepage had a problem. It was slow.
A Fellowship of the Intranet Homepage was immediately formed: me, Erik, a business analyst, and a project manager. I had never met the BA or PM before then.
This story and its surrounding context will be slowly unveiled so here's the point: we delivered that project under budget and on time.
How?
We had a clear answer to the why.
We were given a clear line of sight to our target: make the homepage fast as fuck. Anyone could understand that objective.
When we were done, the homepage loaded in about 500ms. The Beholders wept tears of joy. You can bet that reputation followed us around.
So I ask of you again: what are you aiming your Bow of Value at?
How is what you're doing today/tomorrow/this week valuable? What is the target (or targets)? Is it clear? How clear?
To anyone listening: it feels like I'm running in circles, won't anyone tell me where I should go?
Grab yourself a pen and paper, this is an RPG after all.
Write down the reason you're working on your current project as if you were explaining it to a stranger at the tavern.
Give yourself 1 minute. GO.
