I’ve long been a fan of The Phoenix Project, and grateful for the ways its introduced so many to DevOps culture and practices. One of my favorite personal “ah-ha” moments came from part of its described Third Way of DevOps:

Improving daily work is more important than doing daily work.

It’s essentially the same principle as compound interest. Any improvement to our approach or process means all future work benefits from that improvement.

I believe in this principle deeply, but at times it’s been difficult to find language to really bring it home for others, and to describe how I myself put it to work in practice.

I recently found a phrase I’ve started using that seems to resonate, and accurately reflects a lot of the success I’ve been able to attain so far over my career. It comes down to this:

Always be thinking about “the thing after the thing”.

For every piece of work or process we touch, there is often a future state that benefits in a compounding way if we take the time, while doing that work, to imagine and improve that future state.

How Does This Show Up For Me?

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