About Timing

Intro

I understand timing as a planned moment in time when opportunity and ability meet each other. The question that keeps returning to me is this: why is it so hard to get the timing right? It feels mentally and emotionally overwhelming, even though we already know so much about time. Well, let's break it down:

A practical example will be looking for a job, as I experienced it myself, and all other examples would be B2B-specific... Ok, just too specific for a broad audience. And we need an appropriate soundtrack, so here it is: "Perfect Timing" by Y'akoto. Let's get into it.

About planning

Should I answer the question of why planning is actually required? Well, it's about probability: from my viewpoint and experience, the chances of opportunity and ability meeting each other accidentally are next to zero. Well, if HRs are bombing your LinkedIn with job offers, they have already evaluated your ability, and they indicate that the opportunity is present. In all other cases, you are welcome to deliberately organize this moment when ability and opportunity are present at the same time (and place, but that's more about logistics, which I will not cover here).

Well, the whole discipline of #project management is actually about two things: planning efforts and executing efforts. Since this reference says next to nothing to most people, I'll try to outline some major issues with planning:

The planning effort requires some courage – at least to try to look into the future and fail with a 100% probability, but still keep doing it. To stay at peace with planning, a more Confucian way would probably be to accept that it's an iterative process and, as the project management proverb says, the project plan becomes obsolete the moment it's finished. Some recommended study material would be the "Kung-Fu Panda" movies, at least the first three of them. And I'm not even joking.

How long will it take you to land a new job? What tasks does this effort include: updating the CV, finding job postings, applying, passing interviews. Or, in a more advanced content marketing approach, posting some content to attract influencers – sorry, HRs – and letting them offer positions to you. Or maybe finding a consultant and paying them to do whatever it takes to land that job. Or perhaps we should start with market research and figure out what career path we should take.

You see the problem here: we are dealing with uncertainty even when we try to decompose our effort, and that's what we can control. In all other cases, uncertainty only grows as soon as external actors are involved. What I mean by an iterative approach is that we should try any of these paths, get feedback from the job market, and adjust our plans. And by adjusting plans, I mean answering two questions: should we adjust plans within the current path, or should we pivot toward another path? Yes, a job search can be especially difficult because of this high uncertainty, which doesn't happen in most projects where we've already decided what we are doing. Anyway, let's move to the next point.

A lack of opportunity

A lack of opportunity applied to the job market means that there isn't enough demand for your competence and/or experience. Some other factors can come into play, which can render both competence and experience irrelevant – an example being a strong bias toward national candidates, which for me personally is understandable.

What are we going to do about it? Well, we have to start planning:

Let's take a step back: we have planning here and we had planning at the beginning, so what's the difference? Well, the truth is that you can't be sure whether the opportunity is present: you start acting and hope to at least get information about it. Another point is that plans don't matter, but actions do, because plans won't give you feedback to act upon, but any action – whether "right" or "wrong" – will. In fact, there is no "right" or "wrong" action; the difference is simply whether you get feedback or not. Following this logic one step further: sometimes, when it's especially difficult to get good feedback, a non-standard or seemingly hopeless action is better than doing nothing. If you ask me, I was acting almost hopelessly, and then I got an offer simply because I didn't stop.

A lack of ability

An example here is when you get a job offer, but you think you are underqualified for the job. Well, there's a risk they'll find out and fire you, so let's talk about risks. Risk management is a great expression and even a standard process in almost any project management framework, but I'll tell you what: it's all about taking risks. First, without taking the opportunity, you'll never find out whether you were actually underqualified. Second, you can make progress and/or deliver results, and people value that. So the truth here is that you might be underqualified in the beginning, but no one (I repeat, no one) will remember that later. So, there's no point in spiraling into self-reflection here – just do the best you can. As a result of my own self-reflection across my professional career, at 40 years old I firmly decided to take more opportunities (and risks), especially when the impact of potential failure is low. Opportunities tend to be time-limited, so take the time you need to decide, but no more than that.

Bonus-track: alcohol, drugs and gaming

I have a friend – and I didn't tell him I was going to write a post about timing – who just casually told me: "You know, I used to drink a bottle of beer after work, and I noticed I can't do anything after that." I have my own experience with gaming, which actually helped me to some extent when the market was pretty dead after the New Year, but I eventually decided to stop just to free up some time. And it felt so strange at first: I had nothing to do, but then new ideas started bubbling up.

My point is that this stuff eats your time, and by doing so, it reduces your opportunity to get the timing right. Again, you need to have some flexibility: when new input arrives, you need to be able to react faster than other candidates. Sure, you can take some time off, but I don't think it's feasible to live with any of these addictions on a permanent basis. What surprised me was that even after half a year of quitting gaming, I still wanted to go back for a couple of months. I just missed those dopamine hits because the game was so enjoyable.

Living with less dopamine should be a topic for a separate article (or a book, though I don't plan on writing one just yet), but heavy reliance on it puts you in a comfort zone and eliminates your sense of urgency. Imagine other candidates who do have that sense of urgency – who is going to win? Sure, the stress is real and it's a problem, but I've found sports to be the only healthy way to deal with it. Please don't tell me you didn't know that already.

So yeah, addictions suck in every regard, no matter how "soft" they might seem.

Conclusions

I know a lot of smart people who are actually unsuccessful in certain areas of life. They know these concepts, but they don't apply them in their own lives. Why? People panic – it's human and understandable. As Viktor Frankl wrote: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response." All you need is not to screw that moment up. It's also human to have a will: just breathe and try to be human in this regard as well, instead of a lizard with only run/attack options. An "I'm not a lizard" poster is available in our shop. Just joking – I have more interesting things to do than selling motivational posters. :)