A few years ago I went to an engineering offsite with the team I was working with. Part of the day was a talk from an international level athlete about how their team had gone from being a group of talented individuals to a team that won the biggest prize available to them. There were a lot of interesting parts in the talk but one that has always stayed with me is how they kept balanced between the immediate needs in a game and the big picture goals of their overall season.

A key part of it was that during a game they only thought about the current minute. Just scored what could be the winning score? Forget it and concentrate on what you need to do right now. Just made a mistake and let the opposition score? Again forget it and concentrate on what you need to do right now.

They didn’t think about the ultimate goal of the season during the match, just what they had to do next. Several times through the season they would talk about the big prize and make sure they were still doing what they thought was best to win it but it wasn’t what they thought about every minute.

While writing some business code is not quite the same as competing in international sport I think there’s a lesson here about not getting too distracted when you’re in the middle of a task. Maybe you have an idea of how to do what you’re doing better but it would require a new approach. Finish off what you’re doing with the approach you are using so you’ve got something to show. Then you can decide if it’s worth trying the new approach or not.