Spend more time defining than executing

I was recently told by my manager that my speed of execution had dropped. I thought to myself, “Nothing has changed; in fact, I’ve been executing at the same speed as before.” The next day, I started working even faster, thinking this might solve the slight inefficiency. But even though I was executing faster, the outcomes still weren’t visible.

Outcomes here are defined as deliverables that move the process forward. I was delivering things but kept getting stuck in feedback loops. The feedback was valid and highlighted cases I hadn’t considered before.

Now that I think about it, it wasn’t the speed of execution that was at fault—it was the lack of clarity slowing everything down. Even though I was delivering consistently, I kept coming back to solve the same things over and over again.

One learning I want to document: spend enough time defining the solution instead of blindly executing it. I’ve always been a fan of not just thinking through solutions in my head but also creating some artifacts to play around with. This method works most of the time. But here’s the thing—wait before you jump straight into it. It’s like the last few reps of an exercise: you feel like giving up, but pushing through to the final count makes all the difference. The same applies here—spend more deliberate time defining when working on something new.

I’m going to try this approach at work—let’s see how it turns out.