Useful Ways of Looking

Useful Ways of Looking is a series on concepts I often reference. You could think of them as mental models, or primitives, or keys, or, well, Ways of Looking. You probably landed here because I referenced one and sent you this link for further explanation!

The Useful Ways of Looking are not necessarily true, but they are — as the name suggests — often useful. Finding where to skillfully apply them is part of the job.

In brief

Work expands to the time allotted for its completion, and elsewhere constraints generally predict outcomes as well; the intelligent definition of constraints is often more important than the energy put into execution.

More context

We have all experienced the phenomenon naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson wrote about in 1955: that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” If you give yourself or a team a lax deadline, the work somehow still gets done at the last minute.

The same is true in the inverse: setting aggressive deadlines somehow allows more work to get done than you could ever imagined.

Work indeed expands to the time allotted for its completion. But the pattern is far broader than “work”:

Food consumption expands to the quantity allotted on the plate.

Personal expenses expand to the income allotted to the individual.

Car traffic volume expands to the lanes allotted to the highway.

Actual meeting duration expands to the time allotted on the calendar.

The common thread: outcomes get pulled into the shape of the constraint framing them.

One can imagine a sequence:

  1. We identify a future action (workshipping a feature, eating dinner, allocating a budget)
  2. We — often implicitly — set constraints around that action
  3. We execute the action inside the frame of those constraints

We would like to think that the “frame” is irrelevant to the execution. That if a task is defined, it will take a certain amount of time or effort irrespective of how it is “framed.” But real-world experience says otherwise.

I argue that the (often-implicit or ignored) step of setting constraints around the action plays a more important role in the execution of the action than the action’s very definition itself.

In our sister UWoL piece on Ways of Looking, we said:

Move the “hard” work to the stage of “framing” the problem rather then the stage of “executing” on it, and you will find many more problems are within your capabilities.

The same is useful here. When presented with something to do, shake yourself out of the routine of “just doing” and instead make the framing or setting of constraints an explicit, intentional step. You will then find the “doing” much easier.

A caveat: frames and constraints need not always be so explicit — sometimes they can be cultural. Corporate norms, family habits, and software defaults are silent frames that still nudge behavior. Learn to spot them; you can’t redesign a frame you can’t see.

Ultimately, you rise or fall to the level of your constraints and frame. Creativity arises from intentional constraints, and failures from improper ones.

Further readings

Parkinson’s original 1955 Economist piece.

Shape Up by Ryan Singer from 37signals, on constraint-driven product development.

Atomic Habits by James Clear, on systems and constraints leading to behavior change.

The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt, on the Theory of Constraints (more to come on this in future UWoL posts.)

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