During the convo we centred on how the MoTaverse community can support us all when things feel chaotic.
And it now has me thinking, how can we make the most of chaos when things inevitably become chaotic (hopefully not all the time)?
My mind goes to Cynefin yet I’ve never really understood it. Liz Keogh does a good job of explaining it yet Cynefin still doesn’t resonate.
“Chaotic” in a Cynefin world is described as: Lacking constraint, de-coupled, act-sense-respond, novel practice.
Yet putting Cynefin aside I wonder what we can learn when things are chaotic.
With one lens on I think chaos helps us appreciate what really matters. Indeed when things are chaotic it can be hard to step, or preferably jump, away from the chaos. But when we do we might see things for what they are. We can choose, with the help of others, to prioritise accordingly and focus on things that matter.
Perhaps another lens is to just ride it out until it passes, knowing that it just will because it’s a state of chaos which will inevitably have an end. Tricky though given we’re emotional creatures.
Maybe chaos is a strong enough signal to jump ship or hold steady until things pass. I guess we hopefully all have agency to make such a choice.
What other lens could we approach chaos with? How do you deal with things when things are chaotic? How can we use chaos to influence our relationship with quality?
My immediate thought was thinking about chaos engineering. How from an engineering perspective we can introduce and use chaos to understand quality. The randomness of chaos in this situation drives further quality through expanding our horizons.
I reflected on chaos and mindfulness with the awesome@daowolf over the COVID lockdown period. Psychological studies showed that predictability in environment and life made us think less (or become very distractible). The human brain wants to find novelty, chaos being one way to introduce this, and that novelty helps sharpen our minds.
Chaos to me means being super busy without being productive. Starting everything, finishing nothing.
But, I find there is a lot of energy to take in from chaos as @cakehurstryan suggests . In our profession, we are masters of adapting and getting things done. So I take a step back out of the chaos briefly, draw on that energy to ask myself “How can I bring order to this? Do I need to get some quick wins to clear the decks or do I need to get in for that nasty task as whilst difficult, it bring the biggest win?”.
Using the 4 quadrants of prioritisation is a good tool for chaos. If a lot of things are in quadrant 1 ask yourself are you the best person to deal with is? Could you delegate it to someone else so you can focus on areas you know you can get things done.
Have a look at a testers desk. Mine today, three screens, 4 mobile devices, cables, notebook, stickers, chargers, pens and lots of cables, two sets of glasses mobile and desktop ones, perhaps a donut and a cup of tea earlier.
Its chaotic looking compared to many of my counterparts, for me though its organised chaos and generally my comfort zone.
If you think my desk is chaotic, just wait to have a look at what I have running on those screens and devices.
As a kid my alignment tended to always lean towards chaotic good or even chaos warriors, its was just more fun to play.
Then there’s this theory “It bridges science and philosophy: even without randomness, the universe may be fundamentally unpredictable beyond a horizon.” and I’m pretty its why that chaos orientated kid also loves testing, its just more fun.
