Realization that project environment results in a constricted decision domain. That for the past several days I have deliberately stopped web development work and sought to attend to other concerns. I feel very uncomfortable as a result of this changed focus.

When I attempt to understand the reason for this sense of unease, the answer has to do with the fact that outside of the project I face a variegated, distributed, heterogeneous, decision environment. The criteria for decision making is unclear in comparison with project work.

Outside of a project environment, I am confronted with the need to deal with various decision elements in a range of dis-aggregated decision environments. This is taxing. Decision making becomes more difficult than when it is undertaken within a project context where the project serves to inform decision making and creates an environment of lesser ambiguity.

Decision Domains – The Freight Train Analogy.

Each car in a railway freight train represents a specific task element. A person with normal cognitive skills is able to advance the entire train at the same time. Each unique task element is addressed and moved forward synchronously.

I appear to be faced with a certain “stuckness.” I am able to address the tasks specific to a single freight car but encounter problems as soon as I seek to extend my awareness to the task elements represented by the contents of the second or third freight car. I have trouble switching contexts.

If I step back and attempt to contemplate the entire length of the train, I am overwhelmed, defeated before I have even begun. For whatever reason, I simply cannot easily maintain this “large picture” overall awareness.

I am happiest when I am deep in the bowels of a single specific freight car, rummaging around its content. The walls of the freight car function both as barriers (they exclude extraneous matters and confine a select group of matters to my cognitive range) and as a tool for effective organization. I appear able to manage the restricted set of task elements that exist within the confines of a single freight car. I seem to be unable to manage the full range of task elements contained in the train of freight cars. I can address the tasks serially and asynchronously. I cannot switch tasks quickly enough to deliver a sense of synchronous engagement with a full suite of tasks.

 Update

Just realized that I have devoted 350 words to saying “I am slow.”

This is the fundamental rationale for the Concerna “Slow Enterprise” approach.