I want you to participate in a quick experiment. Close your eyes, or if you're driving, don't do that. But take a moment and imagine in your mind's eye the list of things that you need to do today. Now, it's very possible that you just imagined a specific interface that you use to manage your to-do list. But if you are thinking about all of the things that you have on your kind of responsibility list today, it's possible that it extends beyond whatever that interface is. And it's also very likely that you're going to have a lot of things that you need to do today. It's also very likely that you're missing something. That you're missing something from the list that ultimately will be needed today. Now, we're not going to get into the discussion of how to manage a to-do list necessarily today. But I do want to talk to you about a specific problem that we face with various team processes and personal processes when it comes to managing work. We've talked a lot about prioritization processes. And really, processes in general. And if you think about the average process, what the intent of the average process is, is to create some kind of uniform expectation in order to reduce error rates. Think about it. The most common reason why somebody would want to introduce a process is to take care of gaps that are... That are present if the process otherwise is not introduced. The gaps might be different ways of approaching the same kinds of problems between teams, for example. It may be inconsistent definition of done between individuals or between teams. A process may also help you avoid losing something. Losing something in the mix, in the shuffle. It may help you... It may help you... It may help you... It may help you... It may help you... It may help you... It may help you... It may help you... It may help you... It may help you... It may help you... It may help you... Remember to accomplish a particular task. And if you are one of those people who has an ongoing task list, something where you manage all of that external from your brain, then you probably resonate mostly with that. The not losing a thing part of that. But there's another wrinkle to this problem that something like process actually creates. It exacerbates if you're not careful or if you misuse. Process, broadly speaking. This idea of creating uniformity can have backlash. Perhaps in many ways it can have backlash. But today we're going to talk about the work of a German psychiatrist and pediatrician, Hedwig von Ristorf. Hopefully I'm saying that correctly. The work was done way back in 1933. We're going to talk a little bit about that right after we talk about today's sponsor. Speaking of difficult processes, if you're a developer, you work on a team, especially if you have a front-end product that you work on, you probably get bug reports. And they probably come from all over the place. Many times they include very little context. Maybe just a text description, no screenshot. Or if there is a screenshot, there's no logs, no user ID. You have to go chasing that information down. On what the reproduction steps actually mean. You may end up getting on a call or having to schedule it for next week or the next week. And maybe by that time the bug is gone entirely. Did you click the X button or did you close the tab? These kinds of questions can go on forever, back and forth on tickets. And so many variables can contribute to the application state during a bug. For example, your local storage. Or the response you got. Or the response you got from a network request. Your cookies at the time. The time zone you're in. And it can be very frustrating to figure out what's going wrong. Today's episode is sponsored by Jam.dev. Jam.dev is developer-friendly bug reports in a single click. And you may have heard of it. It's being used by more than 75,000 people. It's a free tool that saves engineers like you a ton of time and frustration. Because it creates guardrails for your teammates to make the perfect bug. It's free to do. It's free to do. They can't do it wrong. Because it automatically includes a video of the bug. Console logs. Network requests. All the things we just talked about. Things not having. These bug reports not having. It even lists out the steps needed to actually reproduce the bug. It's so detailed that you can actually create an automated test just by copying the attributes from the report. Head over to jam.dev to get started. It's totally free. That's jam.dev. Thanks again to Jam for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Tea. So we're going to talk about the work of Von Restorf. The Restorf isolation effect. We can also recall something that we talked about in a recent episode. The Zeigarnik effect. And we might mention that during this process as well. But the Von Restorf. The Von Restorf effect is essentially the idea that you remember things that stand out. This should be pretty intuitive for most people. But we don't think about the opposite side of this effect very often. If we remember things that stand out. Then it stands to reason that the things that don't stand out are less memorable. And if we recall the whole point of process is to create some level of uniformity. So what does this mean? It means that you very well may lose the visibility on something that goes through a process. You may lose the visibility. You may lose it in your memory. It may not be as noticeable if it doesn't stand out. Again, this is not all that groundbreaking in terms of the intuitive side of this. But we often think of process as a protection mechanism. Against this. Rather than contributing to this. This effect is pretty visible when you remember. Oh, wait a second. I think I put something in the backlog about that. You've lost that thing in the backlog. Because if you were to look at your backlog. It looks pretty uniform from one thing to the next. It can be very difficult if you don't have a way of making things stand out. And if you remember the way the Zeigarnik effect plays into this. Is. One kind of caveat is that if the work is unfinished. It's more likely to be remembered. So any work that is complete kind of goes in the back of our minds. Or it goes away from our working memory. And any work that is open takes up our working memory. Now our natural intuitive response to this. Is to create things like expedite lanes. I'm not going to talk about whether expedite lanes are good or bad. I've used them in my career. But what they do is they provide a differentiation of some kind. This is taking advantage of that von Restorff isolation effect. If it's used correctly. But what can tend to happen. Is that we start making too many things. Land in that expedite lane. We start putting high priority on too many items. And once again. That homogeneity. Makes things easy to forget. And so. What does this mean? What does it mean for us in our work? To kind of defeat both of these effects. Because the other kind of abuse of the Zeigarnik effect. Is to create a ticket and get it into progress. So we know it's being worked on. That's one way that we know that is not going to get lost. If we put it into progress. Rather than putting it into the backlog. And this is how we end up. With a ton of work in progress. And a ton of it is in the expedite lane. As a general rule. A healthier team. Is going to have very few things in an expedite lane. And very few things in progress. At any given point in time. At first glance. This may seem like. It's not a very productive team. They're not paying attention to the high priority items. If they don't have things in their expedite lane. They're not. They're not. Working on enough things. If you take a quick glance at this. And you don't know about these effects. But in fact. That is the most likely way. That the expedite lane will actually do something useful. If you're limiting your work in progress. And if you have. A very clear system. Of making one thing stand out. In other words. Taking advantage of that von. The von restore effect. Isolation effect. You can do something. You can do something. You can do something. You can do something. If you have a clear way to make things stand out. Then it will actually take. Your brain will actually see it as standing out. The problem that we have run into with this. Over and over in our industry. And really in every industry. Is that everything being urgent. Creates a homogeneity. So that nothing is urgent. And this is the science to back it up. So the question I'm going to ask you today. I'm not going to assign homework today. Sometimes I do that on this show. The question I'm going to ask you instead. Is how do you make something stand out? In your work. In your life. How do you ensure that something is memorable? I would challenge you. Maybe I will give you a little bit of homework. I would challenge you to audit. Whether you have a system. That is clear. That creates that kind of special. Stand out. Or not. Are you abusing that system? Do you have it? But now it's become just a. You know. A cop. A copy. Of the things that don't stand out. Another great example of this. That comes into play. Especially in larger organizations. And in teams that have. Kind of like uptime. SLA. Isn't that kind of thing. Is our alerting systems. Alerting systems tend to have. A very high. Noise to signal ratio. Right. So unfortunately this means that. If everything looks like a big alert. Then nothing looks like a big alert. The same problem occurs. The things that stand out. Are memorable. But if it doesn't stand out. It's hard to remember. And we're taking a little bit of liberty. Liberty here. I should say. We're talking about. Human memory here. But we're kind of extending that to. Action. If you. Have so many things. And none of them stand out. Then you're not going to remember it long enough. Perhaps even long enough to take action on it. Somewhat immediately. Of course. This is one of those areas. That process does help us out. In helping us. Not forget things. If we were to have to remember our entire list. Of things that we need to do. Or that we need to address. Then our process can help us. In that particular regard. But the best processes take advantage of. And augment our memory. Rather than replacing it. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of developer T. I hope. You will go and take some time to look into this kind of effect. Uh. Figure out. How does it. Impact the work that you do? Has it impact your personal processes? Maybe your team. Your company. And that you can do some kind of audit. What can you do to take advantage of. The of the run restore effect. Isolation effect. And the zygarnik effect. The one that we talked about in the previous episode. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you again to jam for sponsoring today's episode. Head over to jam.dev. It's totally free. And you're going to have. Much better bug reports. If you start using jam. That's jam.dev. If you enjoyed this episode. I'd encourage you to join the developer T discord community. It is alive and well head over to developer t.com slash discord. To join totally free. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your team. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .