Just-In-Time PM #20: Speed as a Capability

In Part 19, I argued that continuously finding new sources of motivation was the most important challenge for knowledge workers, and that the best way to get started was to generate momentum through a series of small wins.

Although Progressive Summarization can bootstrap you to a minimum level of motivation, at some point you do need to go from faking it to making it. The mind can be tricked, but not fooled for long.

Our challenge goes from motivation to speed: how do you keep the wins coming fast and hard?

Throughout this series, I’ve emphasized again and again the critical importance of speed. Intermediate packets, downscoping, convergence, placeholding, small batches, and other techniques are all designed to help us maintain momentum.