Don't Do Everything All The Time

education/over-the-shoulder

I haven't published an article for a longer time interval than I would prefer, however…not writing articles was a necessary thing for me to do.

Let me explain.

I have quite a few projects and obligations requiring me to do work that “hang in the balance.” I have my full-time audio job with a production company. I do content creation for the audio brand I am building. I have client projects for my audio brand. I have mastermind calls that help me stay on track. And that’s just work stuff. 

And around all of that…I have this blog. This where I talk about things I do, how I do them, why I do them, and my hope is that someone finds what I write useful, extracts value, applies it to their life, and improves their position relative to what they want. 

This blog is a passion project, not a money-making venture. Maybe it could be the latter at some point in the future, but it doesn’t serve that purpose right now.

What does that have to do with me not writing? 

Resource Allocation and Minimum Effective Dose.

I have a limited amount of resources available to do work every single day. Resources like time, energy, and cognitive bandwidth, etc. I use these resources to do work for my job, for building my audio brand, for blogging, etc. And that’s just the work stuff. All of these activities require a certain amount of resources to maintain and/or generate traction/momentum; a minimum effective dose (MED) of resources to make progress. If the contribution of resources does not meet the MED, then the result is a loss of traction/momentum.

My job has a MED. 
My audio brand has an MED. 
This blog has an MED. 

Everything has a minimum effective dose. 

Because resources are limited, and there is potential that I do not have enough resources to meet the MED needed for any particular element of my life. 

When I started this blog, I could write when I wasn't on-the-clock at my job. But now, I’m building my audio brand and it takes a great deal of work to meet the MED. Stack that on top of my job…I’m doing a lot of work (and that’s okay).

The predicament that I ran into was that, given my resource availability and the way things were moving in my life and career, I didn’t have enough resources available to meet the MED for my job, work my brand, my client, and my blog (and everything else). If I wanted to write an article, I would have to take resources away from my job, my brand, or my client, or something else. But I need all of those resources to meet MED for my job, brand, and client work. 

That means not publishing articles as frequently, despite how much I love it or how much others appreciate reading my articles. Or at least not until there is a shift in my resource availability.

But why is the blog the thing that gets dropped?

Removing the Most Immediate Constraint (MIC)

Right now my MIC autonomy in resource allocation. In my employment situation, the way I allocate my resources is largely dictated by my employer, even if it is inefficient, generates excess bandwidth tax, or doesn’t align with the life I want. I show up to work when and where they tell me to, that’s the nature of employment. This means that I’m best served to allocate most if not all of my resources toward activities that help shift my income to be generated by freelance work rather than employment. 

But, I can’t just quit my job because I need the cash flow, and I also feel an obligation to my company to transition responsibly. So first priority is my job, and then take whatever resources are left over and put them toward building my audio brand and doing client work. If there’s anything left, write the blog. But, if I only have enough resources to meet the MED for my job and audio brand, and those are the activities that contribute toward relieving my MIC, those are the top priority for resource allocation.

If there’s nothing left I can burn the midnight oil to write articles, risk burnout, blow myself up, take myself out of the game, and not get what I want. Or I can just…not do that.

So I just…don’t do it. 

So how did I find time to write this article?

Recapture and Reallocate

I had some time riding in a truck on the way to an out-of-town gig for my job, and a couple hours to kill in a hotel room. Instead of turning on the TV, I wrote this article. 

And a couple extra minutes here and there to tie some ideas together. 

Right now I am focused on removing constraints. Majority of my resources go towards removing constraints, and what’s left over goes towards fun stuff. This blog doesn’t remove any constraints, so it gets the leftover resources. There haven’t been many leftover resources recently, so that means the blog takes the short end of the stick, and that’s ok.

Here’s some other stuff about removing constraints and resource allocation

Removal of any constraint requires an investment of a specific amount of resources. Resources like time, energy, mentorship, cognitive bandwidth, knowledge, money, etc. Until you have enough of the resources required to remove the constraint, the constraint will remain. Duh.

This is important to recognize because it means that your ability to remove your MIC is limited by the resources you have access to. For this reason, it’s in your best interest to allocate most if not all of your available resources toward removing the most immediate constraint. This means not only being judicious about how you plan to allocate your resources, but also being cognizant of how you are allocating resources in reality.

If you take an honest look at the most appropriate way to allocate resources, and the way you are allocating resources in reality, it may turn out that your behavior doesn’t actually align with the most appropriate way to allocate your resources. 

If you find yourself in a position where you are not allocating resources in the most appropriate way to relieve the most immediate constraint, you have a choice. 

1. Keep doing what you are doing, and stay on the path you are on.

2. Recapture and reallocate your resources toward relieving the most immediate constraint. 

If you have difficulty relieving the most immediate constraint (MIC), the first place to look is resource allocation. If you feel like things are slowing down, or you are losing momentum or traction, the most immediate constraint may have shifted to limited resource availability. 

Here’s the thing, as you take action to narrow the gap between you and having what you want, things move around you. 

As things move, the allocation of your resources will naturally shift on its own if you don't monitor and re-calibrate. 

If you don’t pay attention to the dynamic between resource availability and allocation, you run the risk of directing resources to activities other than relieving your MIC. 

If you start directing too many resources to activities other than your MIC, by default you have less resources available to allocate toward relieving your MIC. 

If you start allocating fewer resources to relieving your MIC, you potentially run out of resources to meet the MED and you lose traction and momentum.

What this means is that your MIC has shifted to resource availability. In other words, you no longer have the resources necessary to maintain momentum in closing the gap.

So if you’ve lost momentum, in order to regain traction, you have to relieve the constraint of resource availability so that you can invest the amount of resources necessary to maintain traction/momentum in closing the gap. 

To relieve the constraint of resource availability, the place to start is recapturing the resources you have that are being allocated to activities other than relieving your MIC. This means not doing one or many things that you’ve been doing, that aren’t actually helping you close the gap. Aka, practicing restraint. 

You don’t have to stop forever, just until you can find the resources available to do the thing again without putting momentum in jeopardy. 

**I’ll Probably update this at some point, but just wanted to get it out there before I run out of resources again

I’ll catch ya one the next one…

-David

PS: If you made it all the way through this article and got some value from it, do me a favor…give it a like. I dump hours into this, likes let me know people are actually reading and appreciate the effort I expend. It’s encouraging for me.