Systems Debts, Revisited
11 min read
Three years ago, I wrote an article on a concept I coined, called: “systems debts.” Systems debts are debts (where work or “payment” is required) to interdependent “systems” (such as connected tasks, habits, life activities, tools, and more) that reduce a person’s (or organization’s) overall capacity for productivity to the point of complete ineffectiveness.
In other words, when you’ve developed a systems debt that is too large, you are unable to get meaningful work done until you “pay for it” with the right amount of effort. Kind of like how when your sleep debt gets too large, you can’t concentrate on anything and you must sleep before you can be functional again.
Because “systems debts” is a highly theoretical concept, it helps to bring it down to earth. My go-to example revolved around a printer. For example, there is a “systems debt” when you can’t print something because your printer is jammed and out of paper and out of toner, and to print a single page, you must put in the work to fix the jam, acquire more paper and toner, and install both. This could take minimal effort if caught days before you need to print a page, but it would take a significant amount of time and effort (running around to different stores, perhaps needing to refuel your car/reload your MetroCard first, perhaps needing to activate your new credit card to refuel/reload) to accomplish the task in a short timeframe.
Why do systems debts arise? Well, usually you defer maintenance on low value things until those tasks become urgent and important. What could have been solved with a little forethought and planning suddenly becomes a huge, acute pain or even a life-threatening emergency (such as when reaping the results of too much deferred maintenance on a car’s brakes). If we think about our financial situation or physical health as complex, interconnected systems, we can see how systems debts in these areas could take months or years to fix.
Related to this concept is the productivity framework that Stephen Covey popularized, invented by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The “Eisenhower Matrix” has four quadrants, drawn from a y axis of importance and an x access of diminishing urgency. Q1 is where many of us live, doing something that is both urgent and important. Q2 is probably where we should live, doing work that is important but not urgent. And to be real, perhaps too many of us live far too often in Q3 (urgent, not important) and Q4 (not urgent, not important).
By the way, for anyone looking for a further development of this productivity framework, please check out Rory Vaden’s TEDx Talk, which is utterly brilliant and deserves its own blog post.
Back to systems debts. The simplistic solution I offered in my article three years ago was 1) recognize that systems debts exist (ta-da! now you have language for them) and 2) pay your systems debts. Of course, that’s well and good as general advice, but it wasn’t very specific as to which systems debts are the most significant, which ones need to be paid first, and how our emotions get in the way of paying (or paying the “right”) systems debts. In a way, I failed to create a complex enough understanding of the problem because I failed to factor in the significance calculation that Rory talks about in his TED talk. To give you an idea of how simplistic my solution of “just pay the debt” was, let me identify one of the largest systems debts in the United States: healthcare. What could have started with effective education around health and an interconnected system of legal and social nudges toward preventative “maintenance,” as a society, we are now reaping the fruits of our deferred maintenance. Talk with any nurse or healthcare provider and they will likely tell you how frustrating it can be to participate in such a broken system. It can be demoralizing, and at the risk of stating the obvious, there are no easy fixes for the collision of issues that has lead us to this societal and national-scale problem, because of the many difficulties involved in a solution. In this scenario, some of the difficulties include getting burned out healthcare providers to care again, to effectively educate and train new healthcare providers, to educate and incentivize patients with chronic or acute ailments to own their treatment, to reinforce positive behaviors of healthy individuals and families (like taking 10,000 steps a day), and much more. Take any massively complex and broken system—i.e. racism in a nation, societal drug abuse, global sexual exploitation of the powerless—and the road toward a solution seems impossible. Where healing can happen, the road is long, rocky, and (due to the heart of mankind) will never be complete as long as broken people live on this earth.
I don’t intend for this post to tackle the systemic failures of our society, though the concept could be useful for any governmental organizations or broadly-minded change agents, I think that this concept works on much smaller levels than a societal one: communal, corporate, familial, and ultimately personal, which is my focal point. While we can influence others in our ever-growing and extending networks, we only have direct control over our own mindsets, decisions, and behaviors.
If you want to change a system, you have to understand how it functions. This is fundamental for things like habit change (thank you Charles Duhigg for highlighting the cue, routine, reward map he calls “the habit loop” in The Power of Habit). As an Enneagram 5, wing 6 who has the strength of connectedness (thank you Strengths Finder 2.0), I always seem to be deconstructing systems into their component parts and reevaluating them. Like a curious car mechanic who disassembles his own car for the joy and experience of learning how it works, I deconstruct systems to better understand them and their influence on myself, my network, and society.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise to you, dear reader, that I keep a series of Excel lists and libraries of organized information (including wisdom insights, racial injustice resources, and ways to find contact information). I keep track of ridiculous things like the number of emails I delete on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, the number of unplayed “Blinks” in my Blinkist app, or even the exact number of parking spaces in a particular parking lot (307, for the curious) because I wanted to know exactly how full “full” was. Some would call this OCD, though perhaps the more accurate term is “awkward.”
To tie all these threads together:
If you are working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic and finding it difficult to work in a cluttered or distracting space, you’re not alone. If it feels like the kitchen has to be clean before you can make a meal (or start work), that is understandable. It can be especially frustrating to have your physical environment out of order when you’re trying to be focused, productive, and calm (according to Gretchen Rubin and others). These things are real challenges that can become progressively more difficult to address when you’re in deep emotional territory, have numerous circumstantial changes (like a move or a job transition), or are just plain bad at doing tasks. It is on this last point that I want to capitalize and end.
I wish I had an elegant solution to systems debts that is applicable for any reader, but the reality is that due to life’s complexity and the uniqueness of everyone’s situations, general principles will have to do. And candidly, I am still figuring it out. The paradigm I’m currently working from is that I can and will figure out how to better manage my systems debts day after day, which I am doing by crafting a solution that is a match with my personality, work style, and personal and professional situation. Because I like organizing lists of information, why not pull all my tasks into a geeky Google Sheet and rank each task based on its urgency, importance, and significance? That way, I have a thoroughly expansive list of personal and professional projects and tasks ranked by their relative weights, and I can always choose the best tasks to work on during my set times to concentrate and do work. Of course, this Google Sheet is my latest attempted fix that may fail in execution for one of several reasons (upkeep is tedious, rework of juggling tasks makes it inefficient, my preference for working with paper (especially with a daily to-do list), the lack of easy mobile data manipulation in Google Sheets makes it impractical to use “on the go,” the hope that I will discover of a better task management tool that I enjoy using more, and my being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks that I, as an Enneagram 5, have identified).
To effectively manage my tasks, I think the bottom line is that I need to apply consistent, concerted effort on at least two levels: 1) getting the work done, and 2) setting up which work ought to be done. Without the discipline of actually doing tasks, no task list matters. Without the clarity, focus, forethought, and prioritization of tasks, only the tasks in front of me (urgent, the agendas of others, etc.) will be my focus. There must be a balance. Figuring out which are the right tasks to be done is a project by itself that requires some level of support and time scheduled on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. There’s really no way around this 2-level split for task management. Fail to identify which tasks are the most urgent, important, and significant, and you’re going to be focused on the “wrong work.” Fail to (in my case, sit down, and) actually do your prioritized daily task list and you’re never actually getting the right work done.
Let’s say that it works for me to build my meta task list (of all my work tasks according to various projects, partnerships, and activities, ranked according my own score key of Rory Vaden’s productivity framework). At least I will have a clear list of what I should be doing. The challenge will then be in the execution. As a high “S” on the DISC, I have found that blocking time on my calendar to do tasks tends to fail for me for two major reasons: 1) as an Obliger, I generally need external expectations to do the work (i.e. some sort of accountability), and 2) as an optimist, I tend to grossly underestimate how quickly I can complete something and I fail to apply the Scotty Principle (to which I need about a 4x multiplier). Instead of focusing on deadlines and using “a deductive approach,” I think it will work better for me to identify my priorities and focus on the most significant work I need to be doing, and commit to specific tasks off that larger list on my daily task list each day. Of course, I need to pair this with a continually improving habit to say “no” more often, eliminating tasks, automating tasks, and delegating tasks—which are all tasks in and of themselves.
A final irony. There are a ton of other things I could have been doing today besides writing this blog post. Some (in particular, my own inner critical voice) might say that I was being irresponsible by taking three hours to write and publish this article. And to be fair, there are several “better things” I could have been doing. To that perspective, I have to counter with a more gracious and understanding (read: gentle and compassionate) inner voice that reminds me it is only in seeing the problem I’m stuck in with clarity that I can extricate myself from its den and learn enough to live and work in a more effective way in the future. In other words, writing this was a first and necessary step to getting me out of my predicament where I am systemically bad at tasks. Without obtaining a clear focus on the problem, and creating a thoughtful, intended roadmap for myself, going forward, I am most likely going to remain stuck, stalled, and trapped. I have to invent my way out of the problem that has had me stuck here (to varying degrees) for most of my adult life. If I am wired to innovate and strategize my way through problems, then applying that same effort to the problem of my over-emphasis on innovation and strategy is perhaps the only way out. I have to use the chains that hold me as the key to my escape.
You’ve stuck with me on a long, involved path, dear reader, and I hope you weren’t too overwhelmed by its tangents and detours. If you, like me, are struggling to get the right things done (the core problem of knowing where to focus, what is important and significant, and having the discipline to do it), I hope you take away the encouragement that you’re not alone. You too can custom create a solution to grow beyond your current impassable roadblock. Perhaps this short exposé on the reasons behind failed task management gives you some new ideas to try out, a better articulation of your own problem, or if nothing else, hope.
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As promised in my previous post, this is an ongoing journey, and you’re getting the raw, “in-process” look at a learner who is in the midst of his learning. I write these things for myself, though I share them with you because I believe they may help you, too. If you clicked here for answers, I hope you were satisfied with more questions. I hope they’re the right questions, the ones that will help us move in the direction we want to move after feeling stuck, blocked or stalled. As with all my posts, please feel free to reach out to me with your feedback. I do my best to read it, whether or not I respond.