The monkey on a pedestal
I love this story about where to focus your efforts as related by Astro Teller: "Tackle the monkey first." Here’s the short version:
Imagine your boss gives you three months to figure out how to
Get a monkey to recite Shakespeare...
...while standing on a pedestal.
Then after a month or two, the boss checks in on progress, and you say: "Things are going great! Look at this amazing pedestal we made out of genuine Italian marble! Look at the intricate carvings!
That sounds hilarious, but there is a tendency for all of us to procrastinate on hairy, audacious, vague things because, well, they're hard. It's no fun making no progress. Working on the low-hanging fruit gives us a sense of forward motion. But all that effort will be wasted if the uncertain thing turns out to be impossible or more complicated than anticipated.
That's why, on a recent project, we consciously pushed all the easy things to the very end, even though we could have completed them quickly. We didn't want it to take away bandwidth on the uncertain parts. After all, who cares about the font sizes on your web app if it just doesn't work?
It's time to stop polishing the pedestal and start training the monkey.
