Reps and Rent

I don't like making the bed. I looooove getting into a made bed. Especially with fresh sheets.

So Saturday is sheet day in my house. Not a Drew invention. My wife started it. I noticed she stripped the bed every Saturday morning and I and wanted to help. And I turned it into my rule: last one out of bed strips the sheets, walks them to the washing machine, and hits start.

Then comes the most important part. You gotta make the bed with the clean sheets right away—having the first cup of coffee is acceptable—but wait no longer than that. Because if left, if I walk past an unmade bed on my way to the floss and the toothbrush and the face wash Saturday night, I don't get out of making it. I just moved it to the end of the day. And there is nothing worse than making the bed when I'm already begging for the pillow.

Skipping the morning bed-making doesn't save you the work. It hands the work to a more tired version of you.

Or worse: I transferred my task to her.

So I don't argue with sheet day. It's not up for debate every Saturday. I decided it once, and now it's just what we do. If I'm up first, it's her. If it's her, then it's me. The deciding is over. The doing is all that's left.

I've started using this principle at work, too.

This idea didn't start as advice. It started on a Monday I didn't want to start.

A Monday where a bigger question about the work was sitting closer to the surface than usual—the kind that deserves a real answer, eventually, when there's time to think it through. But it was 8:30, and whatever that question was, it wasn't going to get settled between my coffee and opening my work laptop. Reopening it right then didn't move me any closer to an answer; it kept me from starting. And made me agitated.

I had a few of those Mondays in a row, maybe a few weeks. It wasn't working.

So I decided to stop reopening my desire to get started at my weakest moment. Instead, when 8:30 rolls around, I just start. I made the call to start the same way I made the call about the sheets—once—and quit debating it Monday morning.

I call it Reps and Rent.

Reps: work that you find valuable, serves your mission, deserves your care.

Rent: the price that buys the conditions where the reps happen.

Rent gets done to standard.

Rent gets no grief. You don't have to call it meaningful. You can't argue with it while your hands are on it. Because arguing the rent every time it comes due is exhausting—and we did that math previously: the arguing is the drain, not the work. The rent isn't what wears you out. The argument about the rent is.

Start with the reps.

You already know there are parts of your work you like. The parts that pull you in. The reason you picked this work in the first place.

Name them. What's the work that lights you up? The problem you like being handed. The stretch of an afternoon that disappears because you're in the flow. The project you can finally see landing. The thing you'd keep doing if the calendar would let you.

Those are the reps.

The question then becomes: how do I make more room in the day for the reps? Because that's what the rent is buying. Not tidiness. Not a clean conscience. Time. Rent buys the time for the reps.

Which means paying it and then getting to the work you're here for.

On Monday morning at 8:30, I do a task I picked out on Friday afternoon. That's how I get back into it—I call it Morning Mo, short for morning momentum. A task that gets me into work mode because it's already there and I already committed to it. Very few exceptions.

The reason it works is because I decided on Friday. And now I'm keeping my commitment. So Monday morning there's nothing to argue with. The bed's already made.

Same trick for all the days. And same trick after a meeting. Know the thing you're going to do when you sit back down—before you get up. And yes, it's fine if the thing right after the meeting is water, or the restroom, or thirty seconds of staring out a window. But then you sit down and do the thing you named. No negotiation required, because the negotiating already happened.

Now—the exception:

A surgeon friend called me recently, he'd been invited to apply for a promotion into a position of hierarchical authority, and if there's one professional group skeptical of management, it's physicians. He was turning it over: yeah a promotion, but also taking it would pull him away from the work he enjoys—the research, the operating, the program he's building—and he wasn't sure the trade was worth it. Should he apply anyway?

That's not rent. That's the lease.

The lease is the whole arrangement—whether this is the right work for you at all, right now. And that question is completely legitimate. He should give it deliberate thought, because the trade in front of him is real: more of the work that doesn't light him up, less of the work that does. 

So reopen the lease, on purpose, in the right room, with the time it needs.

But don't let the lease question ambush you at 8:30 on a Monday with your hands on the rent. That's the move: Give the big questions a real seat—and stop letting them mug you in the doorway of your own workday.

Two questions.

What's one rep this week worth your full care—the work you'd protect if you could?

And what's a piece of rent you keep arguing with, instead of just paying it and getting back to the reps?

Around The Water Cooler ⛲

“The better question for anyone deploying a patient-facing [AI] system is not how often it is right, but how often the person using it comes away with a correct understanding and a sound next step. Those are different measurements, and only the second one tells you whether care actually improved.” Why Comprehension Is the Real Test of Healthcare AI by Dr. Ami Bhatt

“This was the beginning of what I call A.I. wishing: the belief by company leaders that A.I. is magic, that you can wave its wand toward a hard problem and skip the work of solving it. It is sincere, and that is what makes it dangerous.” I Helped Run Lululemon. Let Me Tell You How the A.I. Revolution Is Really Going. by Julie Averill

“When we train ourselves to expect easy and efficient answers to every question, to tolerate only smooth, vapid dialogue, we refuse the glory and necessity of escape. When, instead, we reach for that terrible and hopeful future, when we notice the seeds of it in the present, we break out. Out into the unlikely and the uncomfortable and the unyielding, the doors wide open, the wind urging us on.” The Open Universe by mandy brown

“Somewhere recently, I heard or read the phrase, “compulsion to closure.” I can’t recall how it was used by whoever said it, but it feels like a great description of our human difficulty in tolerating unresolvability and uncertainty, and our compulsive desire to pin things down, get a grip, secure a foothold, nail down the right answer, figure everything out, and know The Final Truth with doubtless certainty. This compulsion has obvious survival benefits in practical matters, but when it translates over into other realms, it easily becomes a problem.” Compulsion to Closure by Joan Tollifson

Thanks for reading. Hit reply and let me know your thoughts.

How To Work is healthcare-focused work design inspiration (from the experts!) to nudge your perspectives and practices into better alignment with the world of work as it is, and away from what it was.