Procedures in the world
From Sam Carpenter's Work the System:
I underwent an enlightenment of sorts. It sounds corny, but in my mind I rose up and out of the jumble that was my life. I was no longer an integral part of it. Floating upward, outside and slightly elevated from the chaos, I gazed down at the details of my business, spread out neatly as if on display on a tabletop. From this bird's-eye perspective it struck me that Centratel was a simple self-contained mechanical device! It was — and is — nothing more than the sum of an assemblage of sequential mechanisms: answering the phones, sales presentations, payroll preparation, scheduling, handling complaints, etc., with each protocol executed in an orderly, linear fashion whereby one step follows another step until the sequence for that particular process is complete. I knew instinctively that the rest of my life operated in the same way: as a collection of separate and independent processes, each functioning in a predictable, reliable 1-2-3-4 sequence according to its own construction.
There's a vast underground network of what I call "the proceduralists": people who examine the recurring tasks in their lives and then write them out as step-by-step standard operating procedures. No two proceduralists go about this in the same way, but they tend to spend hours and hours every week creating new procedures and tweaking old ones.
I know this because I'm one of them. I've documented the various processes in my life for nearly a decade. As of this writing, I have a total of 634 step-by-step checklists [1] — everything from warming up for a session of work to taking a break to read a book to preparing for a podcast episode to, yes, writing a new checklist. And just like Sam Carpenter from the quote above, I have an almost sacred regard for the proceduralist approach. It requires a lot of upfront effort and plenty of continual maintenance, but the return on that investment really is as Carpenter describes: feeling "outside and slightly elevated from the chaos." Or feeling, as another proceduralist friend of mine has put it, "like a master clockmaker in your own clockwork universe."
I suspect that the reason for this feeling is that procedures are the language of our brains. When we deeply learn and internalize a process, like walking or talking, it gets stored in our procedural memory, which doesn't take very much effort to retrieve. But processes we haven't yet internalized — and which are kept in our working memory — are much more effortful to hold onto and retrieve. Standard operating procedures act as a kind of cognitive extension, where you store the procedures in the world rather than storing them, expensively and often stressfully, in your head.
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Footnote:
[1] Let me emphasize that I've accumulated these over 10 years, and I only actively use around 20–50 of them at any given time. As the demands of life change, so do my recurring tasks. Hence the call to create new procedures.
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Thanks for sharing this post @channingallen! I have really enjoyed reading all of the Adjacent Possible posts, but this one especially hit home. How do you determine when to write an SOP? Is it a matter of frequency, complexity, or something else altogether?
Two answers for you — one simple, the other slightly less simple.
Simple first:
When I notice a) I've been doing a particular task over and over again and b) the task is annoying/difficult to do, I'll usually turn that task into a procedure.
Of course, this can easily get out of hand. Say I start an entirely new project like co-hosting a podcast, and I suddenly find myself tripping over 5 to 15 new recurring tasks. Do I just stop doing "real work" for multiple days to tediously translate these tasks into procedures? No way.
Which brings me to the less simple answer:
Every day, I make some kind of improvement to a procedure, whether that means creating a brand-new SOP for an annoying recurring task or fixing a single typo on an existing procedure. For me, this is one of several never-zero commitments I manage on a daily basis. (I use Everyday app for this, and my label for this particular habit is "improve a personal process.")
The reality is that on most weeks I don't spend that much time managing or creating procedures. Maybe 5–15 minutes per day. But on other weeks — particularly when I'm transitioning to a big new project — I might spend up to an hour per day on procedures. But never more than that. Kind of a goldilocks principle of "not too little but not too much" (similar to how I read).
It seems like you have struck a nice balance. I could see myself getting too obsessed with writing the SOPs that it becomes a way to procrastinate execution itself. Thanks!
I am always afraid of creating a procedure because it might prevent me from a better approach in the future.
Fair point. But I fairly commonly update the ones that matter.
Here's what I've noticed personally: When I create a procedure for a task that I don't do very often, I rarely update it. But when I create a procedure for something I do frequently, I can't help but to notice and correct its little inefficiencies over time.
If anything, the act itself of writing the process down forces you to think more critically about it than if you merely use your intuition.
Totally agree with you about the benefits of writing your procedures down. I find that I don't read stuff I write, I kind of just write it and forget about reading it. Merely writing it down confers majority of the benefits I guess.
I wing it. Always.
It frees me up to take a better approach.
Ha, I'm jealous. Winging it has always resulted in disaster for me, especially over the mid- and long-term.
I've been programming for 47 years. I've learned to deal with it.
how do you find notion compared to other tools out there?
Huge fan. It's actually a problem for me how good Notion is, because I've moved so much of my life into it. (To compensate, I also use offline-friendly apps like Obsidian and Anytype for redundancy for my most critical data/docs.)
I'm a big believer in systems. I'm also a big believer in moderation. Systems are great for capturing knowledge and sharing it with your team. They're also great for making sure things get done consistently over time. Documented systems can increase the value of a business if you were to ever want to sell it. That being said, I suggest focusing on the 20% of the systems that produce 80% of the results.
Out of curiosity, do you only use systems in a business context, or do you allow them cross over into your personal life?
If working in team, good documentation leads to more sustainable processes, if well executed. I agree we need to be considerate in the % coverage, because maintaining good documentation is time consuming - time away from doing other work.
Scaling a team with no documentation can be painful as new team members join. Good documentation is an enabler for scaling a team.
Damn, that's so much structure. Don't know if I could work that way. What app do you use for writing down all these checklists?
For the most part I use Notion. Each procedure has its own page in a Notion database.
🤷♂️ It's not for everyone.
Channing, I know it might be sensitive and/or personal information, but could you share a screenshot of one of your procedures within your Notion? Maybe annotated to help folks get an idea of how to get rolling?
Not sensitive at all! But I'm going to save that for an upcoming post. (Not enough people will see it in this comment section, and adding it to this post will make the post too long for the formatting constraints I've created for the series.)
I wonder if there's a business there somewhere. Someplace you can find templated to-do lists you can copy to your to-do app. A "How to live" app of sorts...
Possibly. Problem is, the market probably isn't very promising. Proceduralists are a small segment of highly resourceful people. But never say never…
The idea of offloading complex processes onto external systems to create mental space and achieve a birds eye view is powerful.
Thanks for sharing this post @channingallen!
I think when you've mapped 634 procedures you need to initiate the procedure that books you some time with a therapist. Okay, I'm just teasing, but this is arguably the manifestation of an underlying desire for control that might be negatively impacting other areas of your life, so do consider talking to somebody.
Ha. The 634 number is true but perhaps a little misleading. I only actively use around 20–50 of them at any given time. As the demands of life change, so do your recurring tasks. Hence the call to create new procedures.
Appreciate the concern. I'm the happiest person I know, and generally the person my friends and family come to for advice. Interestingly, there's a vast psychological literature on locus of control. People like me whose loci of control are progressively more internal — "I happen to the world" — rather than external — "the world happens to me" — are happier, healthier, and more stable. (Though I suppose things can go south if you try to control people instead of just things, which I wouldn't advise.)
20-50 is more reasonable 😛
Being happy, people coming to you for advice, or not having a victim mentality (external locus of control), does not mean that you don't have control issues. Anyone who has spent time cataloguing that many life procedures de facto has control issues to be honest. If if you spun it as 'being a collector of procedures', it's still something worth thinking long and hard about what's driving that.
I'm not saying you're unhappy, we all desire control (and have control issues in one form or another), but you are an extreme outlier and being happy is beside the point. Therapy isn't just for unhappy people, it's a moment for guided and/or supported self-reflection, it's the gym for your emotional and psychological wellbeing.
Honest question: do you not find it strange how quick you are to medicalize one of my work strategies (an input) without having any data whatsoever on the state of my social life and relationships, physical health, or psychological health (outputs)?
I literally take this as a compliment. Maybe we just have different underlying personalities?
I don't find it that strange, from your posts that I've seen over the years (and AMAs or podcasts etc) it's clear you're quite proactive and interested in self-improvement and self-reflection - I think it's reasonable, and arguably helpful, to suggest that the root cause of this extreme interest of yours warrants deeper consideration and interrogation.
I've never mentioned your relationships, your physical health, your happiness etc. It's clear from your responses that you have little interest in learning more about the origins of this behaviour, it's just a practice/habit you like to geek out over, and you don't want to feel like it's 'an issue'. So I apologise if I've framed it such, I'd just thought you might like to explore the causes more deeply sometime, as that in itself could present new opportunities 😊
Of course I'm interested in the origins of my behavior, and I'm happy to discuss them. (In fact, I've already planned to discuss them in depth in an upcoming post.)
My only hangup is with the decision to medicalize this behavior as a "de facto control issue" for which I should "consider seeing a therapist." Medicalizing maladaptive behaviors makes sense to me, but medicalizing unusual behaviors without investigating whether the outcomes they lead to are in fact adaptive or maladaptive puzzles me a little. (How can you know you aren't confusing the symptom for the cure?)
Anyway, one nontrivial reason I devote so much TEA to designing systems for self-improvement is that I have ADHD. Think Cyclops from X-Men without his visor. All that manic, unconstrained attention used to cause a lot of problems back in college and when I entered the workforce in my 20s (e.g. I almost flunked out freshman year due to a video game addiction). But with systems like the ones I write about these days, I gain control over my attention and get to channel it — think Cyclops with his visor — into my four most meaningful commitments: character, connections, craftsmanship, and contribution. This creates a positive feedback loop, whereby progress begets motivation begets more progress, etc. (Meds create similar outcomes, but I prefer behavioral interventions to pharmacological ones.)
It wouldn't matter if they were adaptive or maladaptive, the fact there has been such an extreme desire or requirement is the whole point. And frankly, opting to define 634 procedures is a symptom of having ADHD as much as it's a (valid) coping strategy. I'm not saying that in some detached or ignorant way, I have ADHD and I'm also Autistic (and have plenty of friends and family with one or both) - I understand how important these strategies are.
You've spent several replies talking about how I shouldn't rush to medicalise the issue, saying that's problematic, and then eventually you've introduced a medical defence of your behaviour. I'd say that validates my whole point. Honestly, if there was anyone I encountered who lived a lifestyle that involved defining several hundred operating procedures and then passed that off as wisdom or insights that might benefit a 'general' audience, I'd always think it's worth asking if they've investigated the origins of that behaviour or sought guidance. You're sharing an intriguing idea, but it's arguably unhelpful or unhealthy for others unless they have the diagnosis that you and I share - context and audience matter.
In your case you have/know the origins of your behaviour - you could easily have just responded to my first message with the last paragraph from your last comment. Instead you got triggered by my suggestion that talking to someone about your behaviour could be good, and that these aren't normal controls that others do or should implement. That is inarguably fair advice had it been to someone undiagnosed, or perhaps even with a completely unrelated issue in their background. I think you're struggling with this, but let me assure you, this is genuinely very extreme behaviour and it's not generally applicable advice for most of the IH audience (even if there will be people it resonates with). Even if it's highly effective for your personal needs there just aren't people doing this that don't have a very niche or extreme need, or some kind of underlying trauma. In your case, it's a coping strategy for ADHD, and clearly an outlet for it too, but that's important context you hadn't provided and I stand by my comments.
Anyway, we don't need to drag this thread on any longer. I love that you've found methods that work for you, and if anything your post should be celebrating the strategy as an effective means for you to turn your ADHD into a strength, lean into the root cause and the solution, rather than dressing it up as a general purpose method for dedicate productivity-centric intellectuals. Maybe you actually think it is, but it's not.
We'll have to agree to disagree on the tactfulness of you telling me to see therapist, especially after my first polite reply.
We'll also have to agree to disagree about the general usefulness of my advice that people liberally use standard operating procedures to manage complex demands like running a business. Popular business books on the topic almost universally get rave reviews, and my readers here are mostly founders and aspiring founders.
The number 634 (spread out over 10 years) seems to be a big sticking point for you, which I think is reasonable, so I've added a footnote to the original post clarifying that I only actively use a small fraction of that number.
With respect 🙏