how do you focus on the right thing this is the eternal question on this show one of the very first episodes of the show talks about focus and there's a reason for that focus is the recognition and the action taken when you realize the critical nature of time that we all have a limited amount of time to do what we want to do that time is our kind of universal factor that we can't reduce and so focus focus should be at the top of your priority list but it's easy to imagine that we can intuitively understand what we should focus on we've talked about many different mental models on this show and today i'm going to introduce you to another mental model actually two that kind of collide the mental model the first one that i want to introduce you to is the concept of the limb fac if you grew up in a military family you might already know what this particular phrase means it is widely incorrectly identified as an acronym but in fact it's just a shortening of the two words limiting factor and the basic idea is that for any given let's say military operation there are many different variables and one of those variables might be the critical one that keeps you from accomplishing a particular mission. Before we dig into this mental model, I want to go ahead and introduce the second mental model. And interestingly, it comes from a totally different domain, specifically sound design. You may know of this as audio engineering. When you take audio and record it like we are with this podcast, and then you mix it using various techniques, one of those techniques is called compression. Compression and limiting are very close to each other. So you can find a hardware or software compressor or limiter. And in fact, you're hearing my voice go through a series of these kinds of techniques, compression and limiting. And essentially what compression and limiting do in general is they take the highest peaks of an audio signal and they reduce them by some amount without necessarily changing the character of the sound itself. And so the effect is that the dynamics, which is basically the difference between the loudest and the softest part of a given audio recording, are reduced. There's less dynamic change across the waveform. And there's an interesting crossover between these mental models. Specifically, in that it's not always clear what is causing the limit. The limiting factor in a given scenario in a military operation may not be what you expect it is. And interestingly, when you are performing compression, the loud portion of the waveform may be different than what your perception says it is. For example, low frequency energy. Low frequency energy tends to have much higher peaks in a waveform, even though we don't necessarily perceive that low frequency energy as being loud. And so a compressor or limiter that is set to respond to the waveform without necessarily selecting if it's responding to the high end frequencies or the low end frequencies selectively will limit much more readily when the audio waveform has a significant amount of bass, all other things being equal. Okay, so we're not here for a class on audio engineering. What does this have to do with your career? We're going to talk about limiting factors right after we talk about today's sponsor. This episode is sponsored by Unblocked. And in fact, it turns out that what Unblocked does is an example of a hidden limiting factor and a product that deals with it. Specifically, how long do you think it should take to write seven lines of code? Should it take a couple of minutes? Would it take an hour? What if it takes five days? Is that okay? You might be tempted to think that the developers on your team are going to be able to do it in a few days. But if you're not, you're not going to be able to do it in a few days. need help writing code, that that is their limiting factor. But it's usually not the case. The biggest drag in software development isn't writing code, it's having enough context to know what code to write. That is the limiting factor. In a perfect world, your engineering team wouldn't waste time, days even, searching for the context to understand your application. But on average, most developers spend more than two hours a week trying to find information about how a code base works. That's why there's Unblocked, to give your engineering team the answers they need to get their jobs done at the speed they and you both want. Your code base is a compilation of thousands of past decisions and discussions that live across tools like GitHub, Slack, Jira, Confluence, and more. And Unblocked surfaces this history next to your code. So everyone on your team has the context they need. And when someone has a question, Unblocked answers with the accuracy of your most experienced engineers. And that's why there's Unblocked. Get started today at GetUnblocked.com. One of the most insidious enemies of your focus is the belief that you are focused on the right thing when you're not. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. Get Unblocked.com. At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At At problem solving space or optimization space with most of the problems that we're talking about solving here. And so with your planning and productivity concerns that you might be bringing into this conversation, it's very likely that finding just that first limiting factor in most cases is going to have a sufficient effect that finding the next limiting factor won't even be necessary. Because you've achieved kind of more than you even needed to achieve by finding the first one. And this is because for the vast majority of people, they're not thinking about the hidden limiting factors that they're facing. They're focused on just the intentional aspect of focus. So take it one step further. Ensure that you are focusing on the first one. And if you're not, then you're not going to be able to achieve the on the right thing. Ensure that you're finding and focusing on the real limiting factor for what you're trying to achieve. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Thank you again to today's sponsor, Unblocked. We said it in the ad read. We'll say it again here. Unblocked solves one of these hidden limiting factors. Writing code is probably not the limiting factor for your engineers. It's having the context to know what to write. That context exists, but it's hard to write. Unblocked brings it all together. And that's what Unblocked does. They find it in Jira. They find it in Confluence, in Slack, in GitHub, all of these places that your engineers are living and producing that context. Unblocked brings it all together. And engineers can use that context to write the correct code the first time in a much shorter timeframe, not wasting any time trying to gather that context. Go and check it out. Head over to unblocked.com to get started. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.