Don't Split Your Forces
Duos insequens lepore's neutrum capit (Chase two hares, catch neither)
Last week, I introduced the idea of Lines of Effort, which we use to “link multiple tasks and missions using the logic of purpose, cause, and effect—to focus efforts toward establishing operational and strategic conditions.” These are the ‘buckets’ that contain your critical tasks. Mine are: Body, Mind, Spirit, Meaning, Relationships, & Responsibilities. Everything I do should be aimed at advancing one of these LOEs.
The image I used to describe this was the carnival water cannon horse race game. In this game, you are responsible for moving all of your horses (LOEs) by directing your weapon and ammo (time & attention) at each target to advance the LOE based on its current priority.
This image works on several levels. First, we have a finite supply of ammo (time) to direct towards our chosen target.
Second, a common error in the game is to give in to the urge to take one's eyes off the target and look up at the horses to see how we are doing. Regardless of how steady you try to hold the cannon, you can not focus on two things at a time. When we shift the focus to the lag measure (where our horse is), we lose sight of the lead measure (putting water on the target).
Only hitting the bullseye will move the horse forward.
Finally, it teaches us a lesson about multitasking. Most experts will tell you that there is no such thing as multitasking. Instead, we task-switch. We move the water cannon’s stream from one target to another. It is easy to see that we are wasting ammo during each transition and as we settle in on the bullseye.
None of this means that we should engage one LOE to its culminating point before moving on to another, but it does mean that we need to be deliberate in our target selection, focused on putting rounds on target, and conscious of moving all of our LOEs along in a way that keeps our campaign plan on track.
There is an exception to the above that enables us to shoot on two targets at once, but we’ll save that for next week.
Until then, get better at getting better
John
- Your arms dealer for the war of life
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