In agile development, it’s important to eliminate work in progress (WIP) as much as possible, since it can reduce productivity, scatter focus, and increase wait time for new functionality. But what if the same were true for WIP challenges we face in life? That was the revelation of today’s guest, Brian Lam, whose recent new role as the father of a newborn has presented him with some tricky WIP issues in his daily life. In our conversation, Brian explains how having a newborn reduces your free time, the extensive meal prepping he has been doing to adapt, and why eating all that food before it goes off can be a pretty tricky task to get done. We discuss the value of food that is cooked (but not eaten), why meal prep can only be defined as ‘done’ when the food has actually been consumed, and the multitude of factors that can prevent you from finishing all the food in your fridge. Join us as we unpack how to adapt to these challenges and conquer WIPs in life and at work!
[INTRO]
[00:00:01] MN: Hello and welcome to The Rabbit Hole, the definitive developers podcast, living large in New York. I’m your host, Michael Nuñez. Today, we'll be talking about Mastering the Art of Closure: Conquering WIPs in Life and Work. So I'm not alone today. I have a special guest with me who came up with this idea and this topic. I really wanted to hear him out and kind of dig through it, make sense of it. It'll make sense pretty soon. I have Brian Lam with me. How's it going, Brian?
[00:00:33] BL: It's going well. How are you doing, Bobby?
[00:00:34] MN: I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. So, yes, you messaged me one time. It was like, “Hey, I have a topic. But this is going to be crazy left field. Would you like to listen to it?” I was like, “Yes.” [inaudible 00:00:44], tell us a little bit about yourself and some of the context of how we got here.
[00:00:49] BL: Yes. So I'm a lead software developer here at Stride. I recently became a father, about a month and a half ago. So I've had a lot of time to think and honestly not a lot of time to do things. Just think, right? Think like those late nights feeding the baby. You can't do anything. All your hands are occupied, but you're just thinking about stuff.
One thing I have been able to do is do a lot of cooking or do a lot of freaking cooking. So I started doing meal prepping, right? I'll make – I don't know if it's still all the rage, was all the rage. I thought it was great. I spend one part of the week cooking a lot of stuff; chicken, broccoli, green beans, kind of the basic meal-prepping stuff. It dawned on me, right? So I'm eating. I'm eating the chicken one day. It's been like a week and a half. Actually, I don't really know how long ago I cooked it, right?
[00:01:37] MN: It's been too long, but you have chicken in your plate, and now you’re just like –
[00:01:41] BL: It’s been too long.
[00:01:42] MN: I got to eat it.
[00:01:42] BL: It's been so long. The microwave has eliminated all flavor from it. I don't quite even remember what sauces I put on it. So it's going through my mind. I'm like, “Will I get sick from eating this? Should I just throw it away,” right?
[00:01:56] MN: Yes. I think the idea of like meal prep. First and foremost, congratulations.
[00:02:01] BL: Thank you.
[00:02:01] MN: On being a new dad. I can relate with you and the idea that like your body is occupied with sustaining a newborn, but your brain will still go through these really wild mind exercises which I think is awesome. So how did you kind of plug in meal prepping with kind of like the agile framework and the work in progress issue?
[00:02:23] BL: Yes. Again, I'm eating the chicken, and I'm just thinking like I'm looking at my plate of like the green beans, the chicken, the broccoli. I'm like, “How long have each of these things been in my fridge,” right? Each of these individual items. Before having a baby, I would be the typical like I cook something. I eat it for one day, two day, whatever. I get it out of my fridge. I cook something new, right? Cook it. Get it done. Cook something else.
So this is kind of a change of mindset, and I'm thinking what's on my plate. How does this meal prepping relate to work in progress, right? Something that we try to eliminate all the time in our day-to-day work because I'm thinking like each of these items is something that's in progress, a piece of work. Every day you eat a little bit of each. But honestly, they stay in your fridge a long time, and then they actually become legit waste.
[00:03:11] MN: Right. Then I think you called out something, right? The fact that you have a cooked meal or many cooked meals is like in your in-progress swim link because you're in progress of eating and consuming all this food that you cooked. Then I guess we'll have to talk about what is the definition of done in meal prepping. As you mentioned, it is when you finish it, right?
[00:03:33] BL: Yes. I mean, because I went through this thought as well. I was like maybe the definition of done is being cooked, right? But you think about it some more, right? Your definition of done is how much value you're delivering. Is it valuable that it is cooked but not eaten? I don't think so. It hasn't given me the nutrients. It hasn't given me the calories that I want to get out of it. So I think the definition of done is “I've eaten it”, right?
[00:03:56] MN: Right. I think even to highlight that, it's meal prepping a meal but then not eating it and potentially throwing it out, it is waste, right? It's waste for food.
[00:04:05] BL: For sure.
[00:04:06] MN: When we are designing software, the idea of like false feature rich, right? The fact that like a user may not have asked for a feature, but like you implemented it anyway, and then it doesn't get any use, and then it gets cut later on in life, right? That's something you run into when you meal prep but then don't finish the food.
[00:04:26] BL: Yes. I mean, like so, yes, I started thinking about like why do we eliminate WIP, right? That's kind of my thought, right? Why do we eliminate WIP in our day-to-day, and why don't I want to eliminate it in my meal prepping, right? In our day-to-day work, we eliminate it to eliminate waste, right? Eliminate contact switching, right? Switching from one task to another.
Like you said, if everything's in progress, you don't really know how much you're going to deliver. You don't know how much you want to iterate next time, how much you're going to plan for, what you're going to get in the future. All those thoughts, I'm like how does that relate to the meal prepping? Like you said, waste here is literally throwing it in the waste bin.
[00:05:03] MN: Yes. I think that one would have to think about like, “Oh, how can I be less wasteful,” right? Do you meal prep less so that you have less things to WIP? Or do you go down the route, as you mentioned? You just cook the thing you know you're going to finish and continue doing that. [00:05:20] BL: Exactly. Let's say I meal prep every Sunday, right? Ready for the week. If I still have that chicken from last Sunday in my fridge, I don't really know how much chicken I need to buy for this week, right?
[00:05:31] MN: Yes.
[00:05:31] BL: Some things to think about. Like I'm looking into it more, right? Like why do we eliminate WIP? That's kind of the question. Like why do I eliminate WIP but not in my life, like meal prepping? Unplanned work often comes up which can impact WIP and cause WIP. Totally true in my life, right? I'm playing work. Some nights, I just don't want to eat the chicken, right? Some nights, I want to order delivery. Some days with lunch, it's like, “Do I want chicken again,” right?
[00:05:58] MN: Yes. Like, “Oh, man. I had that yesterday.” Like, “I can –”
[00:06:01] BL: I had that yesterday three times.
[00:06:02] MN: Yes. I could go for something different. Let me – let's order Italian, right? Then you kind of go and get spaghetti or something.
[00:06:08] BL: Exactly. It just pushes that chicken. Fill in the WIP. Keep it in the WIP.
[00:06:12] MN: Yes. I think like, yes, unplanned work could also be like – I think in the case of meal prepping, that kind of unplanned work can go down in like discipline, right? Like we can just finish the chicken if we really wanted to. But I fall under that as well where it's like, “Hmm, but I can order a pizza. I would like a pizza today.”
But then like the unplanned work could be like, “Hey, you had to step away from your house for some time. Say you had to go – or here's one unplanned. You have a newborn in the house. Some people come over to visit you, and they bring food. Then what? Then you got like all this food in your house that you have to eliminate. Then you have to kind of like prioritize them like, “Oh, do I eat this because I cooked it first before you brought yours? But it's bread, so it's going to get stale faster.” There’s all these different calculations you have to do.
[00:07:11] BL: Then one thing that I've started trying to do is like, well, maybe I'll just eat more, right? Maybe I'll eat my meal prep and what they cooked. So now, I'm eating like two portions at once, just to try to get it all out. That has other consequences, right? Like starting to get that newborn dad belly going.
[00:07:28] MN: Yes. I'll tell you right now. It's very hard to get rid of, A. But, B, it's very easy to carry your child when you have a gut because then they just kind of sit –
[00:07:37] BL: Sit on it.
[00:07:37] MN: Right on it, and it's nice and comfortable for everybody. [inaudible 00:07:41] used to love falling asleep on my fat. Then I haven't found an excuse to lose it, so I still have it. But, yes, you got to be careful with that and make sure. Like I guess if you have any leftovers, and you're trying to eat and portion two meals at a time, make sure you got some greens in there is the idea.
[00:08:00] BL: Got that green beans and got the chicken and the broccoli. Balanced meal, got a little bit of rice. It's balanced, right? I cooked it for a purpose, right? I think at the end of the day, like the thing that I came to, right? Why do we want to eliminate WIP in the workplace and maybe not always apply that into the life? There's just different trade-offs you have to make, right?
I don't have time to cook every night, cooking for me my wife. Not cooking for the baby, but cooking for us too, right? I don't have time to cook every night. I don't have time to cook maybe even every other night, right? It's just non-stop baby caring, caring for. So there's that trade-off. Do it all upfront. Take a couple of hours. Take a few hours one day. Eat for a week. Eat for a week and a half, however long.
[00:08:48] MN: Yes. I think like the idea of you – I mean I imagine this is very similar to – now, I'm curious if it's considered a WIP. Or is it considered like sprint planning because it's like, “Okay, we're going to eat all these things, and the chicken is three points. The green beans is one point. So we got to get another green in there. Let's put broccoli in there for one point. That'll last us nine points, and we'll finish the sprint at that end.”
But then it's like, “Oh, some things –” You can't really carry over chicken that's old, right? Eventually, it's going to get bad, and that's where it becomes wasteful, which I imagine is like there's some nuance here with like what is – whether it's a sprint plan or whether it's kind of like you dealing with work in progress food. I just think it's hilarious that we are talking about food and meal prepping in the same way that we would for tickets on a Trello board. I think it's hilarious.
[00:09:46] BL: But that's how I see it, right? Like sprint planning is an apt metaphor. Each of these are tickets, right? How long it takes to finish the chicken doesn't necessarily apply to how long it takes to finish the broccoli.
[00:09:57] MN: Yes, exactly.
[00:09:58] BL: You might not have cooked, A, as much broccoli or, B, whatever, right? Maybe I'm not doing it right. I don't have those meal prep Tupperware things, like the little boxes where you can put little things. I just put a Tupperware of chicken and put Tupperware of broccoli, right? I scoop level this, scoop level that.
[00:10:18] MN: You make your plate, and then you go, and you microwave it, and you do that for a week and a half until you ask yourself, “Am I eating chicken or am I eating freezer burn chicken?”
[00:10:27] BL: Yes, yes. Then is it time for the trash, time for it to be waste? Then at that point, why did I even do it?
[00:10:36] MN: Then you feel bad. You order out. You kind of do this thing. Here's what I think we should ask folks. If you have any really good meal-prepping meals, feel free to send that in. Tweet me @radiofreerabbit. I'll be curious to know what meal prep-related meals are out there that we could use because, I mean, we got to help you out, bro. You can't just be eating chicken, broccoli, and green peas.
[00:10:58] BL: Yes. I need more recipes. I think I've made every – like honey sesame chicken is very, very popular.
[00:11:04] MN: Yes. I mean, I’d eat it.
[00:11:05] BL: I did like several honey sesame chicken recipes that have all been good for like the first few days and then tired. Sick and tired of it.
[00:11:14] MN: Sick and tired of it. I think the idea of looking at your meal prepping in terms of like eliminating WIP, again, there are some trade-offs to it. But just ensure that whatever you are cooking or delivering can be seen through or eaten at the end of the day. You don't want to – you want to eliminate waste, whether it's in the trash bin or in the workplace, to make sure that you're delivering use or rather delivering value to your users. In your case, it's your stomach and your wife's stomach.
[00:11:53] BL: Yes, exactly. Like waste is in the trash bin. Waste is the time that I spent if I don't eat it, right?
[00:11:59] MN: Yes, exactly.
[00:12:01] BL: All this is waste.
[00:12:03] MN: Yes. [inaudible 00:12:03]. I will do my best to get you some recipes. We need to get you some recipes, all right.
[00:12:09] BL: Appreciate it. I need some good ones to get me out of the chicken, broccoli, and green bean factory.
[OUTRO]
[00:12:15] MN: Follow us now on Twitter @radiofreerabbit, so we can keep the conversation going. Like what you hear? Give us a five-star review and help developers just like you find their way into The Rabbit Hole. Never miss an episode. Subscribe now, however you listen to your favorite podcast. On behalf of our producer extraordinaire, William Jeffries, and my amazing co-host, Dave Anderson, and me, your host, Michael Nuñez, thanks for listening to The Rabbit Hole.
[END]
