Only one hat

A group can wear multiple hats, plus ties. (Provincial Archives of Alberta)

When you're the only one working on a project, it's possible to get away with a minimum of planning.

You don't have to communicate with or consult anyone else, so decisions and midstream changes are easy to make.

That's also the reason that it's easy to get lost and quit in frustration. The project manager (you) is disorganized and making things difficult for the person who's just trying to get the work done and go home (also you).

My hardest projects are the ones that involve lots of layers. Even if I'm collaborating with others, I might be taking on multiple roles. This gets confusing when I'm in the middle of one aspect of the project and reconsidering (or rueing) decisions I made when I was pursuing another.

In the worst moments, I'm questioning an entire decade's worth of choices. Like David Byrne in "Once In A Lifetime," I'm asking myself, "How did I get here?" or even "My God, what have I done?"

Futilely, I'm trying to go back and fix problems that I am no longer in a position to fix. The gap between what I wanted to build and what I now see that I will be able to deliver creates an emotional and intellectual agony. To paraphrase my little nephew, it is bad, and so I do not wike it.

Since I'm a grownup and the one running the project in the first place, it's up to me to deal with the unpleasant emotions, figure out a way forward, and resolve the issue. What I've realized is that I can wear only one hat at a time. In a practical sense, if I'm the writer, I can't be the editor. If I'm the teacher, I can't be the administrator. And if I'm the worker, I can't also be the foreman.

To try to wear two hats—to try to take on two roles at once—not only looks silly, it brings the project to a standstill as I go back and forth, re-litigating closed cases and complaining about the poor working conditions I've brought upon myself.

I may have the power to prevent a problem from recurring, but creating new policies or procedures doesn't help me when I'm dealing with the results of the old ones. I have to use the tools at hand to get myself out of the sticky situation my past self made.

So I can roll my eyes at what I did yesterday when I was the boss, and today I've got to roll up my sleeves and get to work. What do you do with a two-story pile of shit? My friend Thornton says, "start shoveling." He points out that you can use it to grow new grass.

Because I'm used to being the boss, I get whiny when I don't get to wear the boss hat. I don't like having to buckle down and do mediocre work just to get it done. I keep thinking there is some way around it. So I can put on my boss hat for a minute and survey the landscape, but then, when the answer is, "Nope, no way around it," I need to put my worker hat back on and keep shoveling.

Once I accept it, the work isn't so painful. I just do the typing, the packing, or the painting without questioning whether it is the best use of my time. I understand that the decision has already been made that it is the only use of my time right now. There's peace and relief when I can let go of what might have been and focus on what is. In this moment, I'm responsible for one thing and one thing only. I can handle that.

Wearing only one hat challenges me to be intentional about what I'm doing and why. Knowing that a future me will have to deal with the consequences of my actions, I can do more thorough planning to prevent undesirable outcomes for that hapless soul.

And when I'm wearing the hat that requires me to carry out someone else's plan, I can stay focused on the task at hand, knowing that it's all I have to do. There's no looking upstream or downstream for now—there is just the job to be done. Here we go!