The power of the pause

While writing my last blog post, a review of Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” book, I reminded myself of a topic I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while, viz. the power of the pause.

Coming at this from a software development perspective, I mentioned in the last blog post that:

“There seems to be a new trend forming around “deployments to production” as being a useful measure of productivity, when really it’s more an indicator of busyness and often comes as a result of a lack of appetite for any type of pause along the pipeline for humans to meaningfully (and deeply!) interact with the software before it’s deployed.”

I often see this goal of deploying every change directly (and automatically) to production without the goal being accompanied by compelling reasons for doing so – apart from maybe “it’s what <insert big name tech company here> does”, even though you’re likely nothing like those companies in most other important ways. What’s the rush? While there are some cases where a very quick deployment to production is of course important, the idea that every change needs to be deployed in the same way is questionable for most organizations I’ve worked with.

Automated deployment pipelines can be great mechanisms for de-risking the process of getting updated software into production, removing opportunities for human error and making such deployments less of a drama when they’re required. But, just because you have this mechanism at your disposal, it doesn’t mean you need to use it for each and every change made to the software.

I’ve seen a lot of power in pausing along the deployment pipeline to give humans the opportunity to interact with the software before customers are exposed to the changes. I don’t believe we can automate our way out of the need for human interaction for software designed for use by humans, but I’m also coming to appreciate that this is increasingly seen as a contrarian position (and one I’m happy to hold). I’d ask you to consider whether there is a genuine need for automated deployment of every change to production in your organization and whether you’re removing the opportunity to find important problems by removing humans from the process.

Taking a completely different perspective, I’ve been practicing mindfulness meditation for a while now and haven’t missed a daily practice since finishing up full-time employment back in August 2020. One of the most valuable things I’ve learned from this practice is the idea of putting space between stimulus and response – being deliberate in taking pause.

Exploring the work of Gerry Hussey has been very helpful in this regard and he says:

The things and situations that we encounter in our outer world are the stimulus, and the way in which we interpret and respond mentally and emotionally to that stimulus is our response.

Consciousness enables us to create a gap between stimulus and response, and when we expand that gap, we are no longer operating as conditioned reflexes. By creating a gap between stimulus and response, we create an opportunity to choose our response. It is in this gap between stimulus and response that our ability to grow and develop exists. The more we expand this gap, the less we are conditioned by reflexes and the more we grow our ability to be defined not by happens to us but how we choose to respond.

Awaken Your Power Within: Let Go of Fear. Discover Your Infinite Potential. Become Your True Self (Gerry Hussey)

I’ve found this idea really helpful in both my professional and personal lives. It’s helped with listening, to focus on understanding rather than an eagerness to simply respond. The power of the pause in this sense has been especially helpful in my consulting work as it has a great side effect of lowering the chances of jumping into solution mode before fully understanding the problem at hand. Accepting the fact that things will happen outside my control in my day to day life but that I have the choice in how to respond to whatever happens has been transformational.

Inevitably, there are still times where my response to stimuli is quick, conditioned and primitive (with system 1 thinking doing its job) – and sometimes not kind. But I now at least recognize when this has happened and bring myself back to what I’ve learned from regular practice so as to continue improving.

So, whether it’s thinking specifically about software delivery pipelines or my interactions with the world around me, I’m seeing great power in the pause – and maybe you can too.