Timing is Everything (Part 1)
Timing is just as important as the decision itself, my dude. You have the right thing/idea to raise up but if you raise it at the wrong time – then, bam! Your idea goes wasted.
That is one example. Wrong timing does not only make ideas go to waste, it can cause frustration and dissatisfaction, heartbreak, and loss of trust and credibility. Time is a double-edged sword, and there is timing in everything.
Time ≠ Timing
Generally, time itself can't be bought with money. Actually, money can buy time. Use the money to pay for Grab Food/Foodpanda to deliver to you. Instead of wasting time commuting to the restaurant, you can use the time for productivity. Welp, people are free to manage their time accordingly to their priorities. Hustlers with their overtime and work-life balance try-hards like me with my language classes and hobby routines. I respect other people's time and I'm trying my best to make my interaction with them not another time wasted. Mutually, I don't want people to waste my time either.
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| have you heard this song? |
In UX we put a loader in the UI to manage user expectations on time. Rather than letting them look blankly at the screen without any feedback after tapping a button, we tell them 'Yo, you need to wait for your ass up. The screen is loading stuff from the server'. In an agile sprint that often over-commits and underdelivered, you should take realistic workloads to commit (know when to say NO, please!), set realistic delivery ETA with buffer and cutoff timing for every phase to avoid non-stop enforced 🙄 overtime and emotional fatigue. <- Enough talking about time. Now we talk timing.
Above-average people mostly strategize and plan their timing. Average people struggle to find the right timing, while the below-average will just say/act what they meant without even looking for the right time.
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| Think and plan carefully first before you decide the right time is now, lol. |
Not everything is meant for 'Now'— P/s: but now is the right time for you to be a better, beneficial human being and obedient worshiper to God! Some decisions require months of planning and study. But don't let the planning or study be your excuse for not executing your action. Sometimes, you should take the leap of faith.
So, here are the main points from John Maxwell's The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership #19 – The Law of Timing.
The wrong action + wrong timing = disaster ☠️.
For example, you are a strictly UI-only designer without basic coding knowledge. You don't know about the complexity of the existing backend structure. You chose violence by condemning the backend devs, telling "Your codes must be shitty because this screen loads slowly and got performance issues" in front of the boss and the product owners/clients. LOL. How fucked up is that?
Wrong action: bitching about things you don't know, skill-shaming the developers.
Wrong timing: telling it in front of the product owners/clients.
Wrong timing: telling it in front of the product owners/clients.
Your colleagues will hate you, big time, you schmuck.
The right action + wrong timing = impending resistance 😏.
Resistance here means the refusal to accept or comply with something #WOTD. Sometimes, you wanna give unsolicited 'constructive criticism' to someone about his/her skill that you don't own, whilst that particular 'someone' is about to favor you with that skill. 80% of the time, you might not get the favor. Even if you get the favor, it won't be his/her 100%, and there's no sincerity from that 'someone'.
For example, you need your friend to drive you somewhere the coming evening. But, during the afternoon, you 'constructively criticize' him/her saying his/her driving attitude is making you uncomfortable. And as expected, you didn't get the driver's favor for the ride you needed later that evening. I don't want to do something without sincerity or half-hearted. Feel free to call me an idiot sandwich.
The wrong action + right timing = mistake 😩.
On a magical morning during the scrum cycle weeks, suddenly the rare appearing company CTO joined the standup meeting (This is the CTO for ACME Company ah, not the company I work with. Ours is very not rare-appearing and listens👂 to us during the stand-ups). For an opportunist employee, this is the golden time to escalate issues and get quick business-wise insight to decide on something. You got a blocker on your side that you think will affect the scrum team badly, but you've been ignored by the scrum master/product managers. Now, with the CTO around, this should be the time to voice it out. But instead, you stay silent because you assume your opinion won't matter. You just wasted your opportunity, you schmuck.
Okay. Maybe it ended up with your opinion really a no-matter to them. LOL. But at least, you will receive visibility credit from your superior for asking or highlighting something.
The right action + right timing = FTW 🙌 .
This is where incredible things happen. When you hit the right timing, everything will be impactful, inspiring, and hyperbolic. You'll gain extra credit even though you thought that your contribution is just a drop of water in an Olympic-sized pool. Last week, during the mobile team morning stand-up this kinda thing happened. The QA lead suddenly raised something to the dev lead. It was about the development timeline during our current sprint when it was not his turn to talk yet. It was so sudden but happened at the right time. It made me and several other colleagues react with 👍 during the meeting. Listening to it was just exciting.
The way he talked made us realize the pain points faced by the QA team as well as the importance of API readiness to ensure the developed build works well. Few colleagues privately ping me, telling me they got instantly inspired by his talk. Damn~ <- This was on Wednesday, 27th July last week, but I remembered it well for its impact.
Okay.
Next time I'll write about how to hit the right timing.