Sidhuvud

The blog


Previous article

Next article

23 Jan

How unpredictable is actually the unpredicted?


Datum: 2025-01-23 09:24
This is a flat lay of traditional shaving tools and grooming products arranged on a white surface, including razors, shaving cream, a brush, soap, scissors, and balms.

Some­times things just get too busy. You have an idea or even a plan for what you need to get done before the end of the day but some­thing unpre­dict­ed pops up and spoils every­thing. And it is not the first time. In fact, this hap­pens constantly! 

Hang on a minute. How unpre­dictable is it real­ly if it has hap­pened before and even hap­pens often? Prob­a­bly less than one might first assume. 


For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the Done!” pod­cast:


Waste of time

The prob­lem with unfore­seen events is that they mess up our plan­ning which means things take longer to do and our job then becomes hard­er than it needs to be. What if we could pre­dict them to a greater extent and either pre­vent them from hap­pen­ing at all or at least antic­i­pate them so that we are not as sur­prised and affect­ed when they occur?

Depend­ing on some­thing, but on what?

Every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son — cause and effect — and every cause occurs due to some oth­er pri­or event. If you man­age to find the root cause to why the unfore­seen thing hap­pened and change or add some­thing at that point or stage which will get rid of the cause, you will also not have to suf­fer the con­se­quence in the future. In my sec­ond book on sim­pli­fy­ing, I rec­om­mend peo­ple to thor­ough­ly search for the root cause, which can some­times be sev­er­al steps back in the line of events lead­ing up to your unfore­seen and unpleas­ant inter­rup­tion, since solv­ing this often means dis­solv­ing the occur­rence of sev­er­al unex­pect­ed events fol­low­ing it.

A sim­ple example

If this all sounds a bit com­pli­cat­ed, allow me to exem­pli­fy with some­thing sim­ple. Just a few moments ago, as I was writ­ing this very doc­u­ment, I was unex­pect­ed­ly inter­rupt­ed. I took a quick look at my LinkedIn-account where some­one had asked an inter­est­ing ques­tion which got me think­ing and sud­den­ly, I had spent ten min­utes pon­der­ing their query. I would much rather have spent these ten min­utes writ­ing. Some­thing seem­ly unfore­seen dis­turbed my flow and gave me a break I had not planned for.

Why? In order words, what was the cause of the inter­rup­tion? Well, I spot­ted the question.

Why? I logged into LinkedIn.

Why? I had an impulse to do so.

Why? Because I hap­pened to spot LinkedIn in the back­ground, behind the doc­u­ment I was writ­ing in.

Why? Because I had brows­er win­dows open and ful­ly visible.

Alright, now I know this line of events, how can I pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing in the future? Well, one of sev­er­al pos­si­ble solu­tions is writ­ing my tips on struc­ture in full-screen mode so that I see noth­ing but the doc­u­ment. I will then be less tempt­ed to just have a look” at what­ev­er it is that is grab­bing my atten­tion and will get more wiring done in a short­er amount of time.

Said and done. And let me tell you, this sim­ple trick def­i­nite­ly works for me.

Do this

The next time you are inter­rupt­ed by some­thing unpre­dict­ed which you do not want to be dis­turbed by in the future,

  1. Start by solv­ing the prob­lem that needs to be fixed or attend­ed to. Avert the dan­ger, answer the ques­tions, do the thing, or what­ev­er you need­ed to do with the unfore­seen task.
  2. Right after you have dealt with it, ask your­self why it hap­pened. There may be sev­er­al rea­sons, so choose the one that seems most like­ly — along the lines of how Ock­ham would have dealt with it.
  3. Dig a lit­tle more and try to fig­ure out what the caus­es of your orig­i­nal cause might be until you arrive at what you believe is the root cause of it all (the full rea­son or at least part of it).
  4. Think of some­thing you can do that will reduce, min­i­mize, or elim­i­nate that root cause from occur­ring. If you man­age to elim­i­nate it, that would be fan­tas­tic, but just reduc­ing it can make a big dif­fer­ence too.
  5. If you are unsuc­cess­ful in find­ing any root cause you your­self can do some­thing about, which then means that the unpre­dict­ed thing real­ly was unpre­dictable, think of some­thing else you might do that can alle­vi­ate the sit­u­a­tion and not mess up your day com­plete­ly when it hap­pens. Per­haps you could decide what task you will do if your bus home is late or if the wifi stops working?

More as you want it

If you do what­ev­er is in your pow­er right now to reduce the occur­rence of that unfore­seen thing that keeps hap­pen­ing, you will not have your day inter­rupt­ed as often as it cur­rent­ly is. Your work­days will be more to your lik­ing (and as you would want them to be) and you will get what­ev­er tasks you do done with greater ease. In my world, every improve­ment con­tribut­ing to this is worth the effort.

What’s your way?

How have you man­aged to rid your­self of some seem­ing­ly unfore­seen thing that kept hap­pen­ing and dis­rupt­ing your work­day? Feel free to email me and share your thoughts. 

(By the way, here’s how to tack­le the uneven­ness of every­day life!)


Want more?

A bearded man with tattoos is relaxing in a barber chair, listening to music through headphones.

If you want more tips on how to create good structure at work, there are many ways to get that from me - in podcasts, videos, books, talks and other formats.

Yes, I want more tips!