I was pottering in my kitchen on a sunny Sunday when I swiped a stool with my left foot. Ouch!
After much hopping around and cursing then icing said foot I realised that the pain wasn’t getting any less. Should I simply suck it up and get on with my day, or head to the nearest Emergency Department and lose an afternoon to a whole lotta waiting?
A little toe seems such a trivial thing. And this was my very smallest toe.
But it did hurt [rather a lot] so I went to the ED and it turns out the toe was dislocated.
A local anaesthetic and a little traction later I left feeling on top of the world. With the right treatment at the right time, I was back in shoes and walking within a day. Had I not taken action pretty much at once that foot may have got a lot worse before it got better.
Which got me wondering when is the right time to focus on the little things?
It’s generally recommended that we do the important before the urgent*, keep our eyes on the [bigger] prize, and to eat our frogs** first.
But there are times when sweating the small stuff makes sense.
Make Space
When I’m working on a gnarly strategy piece, sometimes I need to make some space. After all the evidence and data for a project have been gathered I need to give myself time to think through what it all means.
It’s like a cognitive breather.
Anyone looking at me might think that filing papers or alphabetically organising the spice rack is inessential ‘make-work’. But for me, the break from the desk is often my path towards insight.
Deep Work author Cal Newport calls these deep breaks. They make space for more deep thought. They give your mind a chance to regroup and recharge and room for invention and inspiration. Newport warns not to let your deep break become a deep distraction by jumping onto your email or moving your attention to something that will require different deep thought. And he suggests keeping breaks to just 10 to 15 minutes.
Show Care
Sometimes we need to sweat the small stuff because of how it will look if we don’t.
Perception matters.
Brand perception is driven by all the experiences customers have with your business, not just the service or product they purchase.
For example, what does it say to your customers if you’re a restauranteur offering brilliant food and superb service, but the restrooms are full of boxes, dirty cleaning rags, and other detritus?
Small things matter.
The ‘broken windows’ theory, first described in The Atlantic in 1982, suggests that one broken window begets more. The article cited experiments which found that when things are left untended or unattended, people’s attitudes towards their environment changes. It seems to invite more vandalism – often by people who would not normally dream of breaking the law.
Mayor of New York City in the 1990s Rudolph W Giuliani talks here about how he applied broken windows theory to focus on little things that had previously been ignored.
Check Mate
I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea that if you take care of the small things the big things will take care of themselves.
But I firmly agree with Benjamin Franklin that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
The idea of check mate is to thwart or to counter something completely. Dealing with my toe straight away was a preventative action and countered a week of pain and potentially a more significant treatment regime.
So even when something doesn’t seem large or urgent, dealing with it swiftly can prevent something worse from happening.
Put Off
Of course, if all you are doing is putting off the bigger, meatier, more important things then it is simply procrastination. Which doesn’t really cut it.
I read a great metaphor about procrastination recently which is that it’s like a credit card…. a lot of fun until you get the bill. It’s so true. Someone has to pay sometime.
The antidote to procrastination is action.
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, writes beautifully on why we procrastinate, how to make the consequences more immediate and the importance of crossing the action line. Clear offers many great tips to support getting to peak productivity and not slipping back into procrastination.
So what’s your action focus?
Are you able to focus solely on the urgent and important or do you find you’re sweating some small stuff? And if it’s the latter, is it for known constructive reasons or merely procrastination?
It’s fine to put the little things first to make space for invention, to show care for customers, or to prevent something worse. But if you’re purely putting off the hard work I’m afraid it’s time you ate that frog!
* Stephen Covey brought the Eisenhower Urgent/Important principle to a mass audience in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
** In Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy advocates tackling the most challenging task of the day before anything else.