{"id":1713,"date":"2014-09-22T08:19:12","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T14:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=1713"},"modified":"2014-09-09T09:21:30","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T15:21:30","slug":"should-you-be-mapping-or-using-a-gps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/1713","title":{"rendered":"Should you be mapping or using a GPS?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 178px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"GPS Backup by Jimmy_Joe\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/774419510_1f67b7e50d_m_gps.jpg\" alt=\"gps photo\" width=\"178\" height=\"240\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><small>Photo by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/31073149@N00\/774419510\" target=\"_blank\">Jimmy_Joe<\/a> <a title=\"Attribution License\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-inject\/images\/cc.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I recently spent a long time in the car, driving cross country. I had a GPS that led me from across the USA, including through New York City, at 60-80 miles an hour. It was easy and convenient to focus on the road and the radio while listening to the dulcet tones of the GPS, but I missed the map reading and location awareness I&#8217;d had in previous cross country trips, when using a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.randmcnally.com\/\">Rand McNally<\/a> atlas. Because all I&#8217;d been doing was following directions, I didn&#8217;t have the understanding of the larger context&#8211;how roads fit together, what cool places were just off the interstate, or even which city I stopped in for lunch.<\/p>\n<p>In the vein of Mark Suster&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bothsidesofthetable.com\/2009\/11\/04\/is-it-time-for-you-to-earn-or-to-learn\/\">&#8220;Is it Time to Learn or Earn&#8221;<\/a> (which is definitely worth a read), I wanted to talk about whether your current task is a &#8220;mapping&#8221; task or a &#8220;GPS&#8221; task, and what each type of task looks like.<\/p>\n<p>Mapping tasks can be high level or low level, but share the following characteristics. They:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>require you to look at the big picture<\/li>\n<li>are focused on a long term goal, not tactics<\/li>\n<li>often result in serendipitous results<\/li>\n<li>take longer<\/li>\n<li>sometimes require backtracking from dead ends<\/li>\n<li>make you stop every so often and look around<\/li>\n<li>have learning as a direct goal<\/li>\n<li>require iterative search queries<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Examples of some of my past mapping tasks include selecting a <a href=\"\/wordpress\/archives\/847\">public records data vendor<\/a>, hiring an employee, creating my <a href=\"\/wordpress\/archives\/1679\">first REST API<\/a>, and making my first departmental budget. Don&#8217;t be afraid to ask for help with mapping tasks, or to stop every so often and make sure you on right track.<\/p>\n<p>GPS tasks, on the other hand, tend to be tactical. GPS tasks:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>often have clear directions (sometimes from others, sometimes from your experience)<\/li>\n<li>don&#8217;t require you to understand context<\/li>\n<li>require little, if any, exploration<\/li>\n<li>are action oriented<\/li>\n<li>often are smaller in scope<\/li>\n<li>have learning as a by-product, if at all<\/li>\n<li>can be phrased as a single google query<\/li>\n<li>may not be core to your business or job<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some of my past GPS tasks include: setting up a virtual server for development, finding a way to <a href=\"http:\/\/maven.apache.org\/plugins\/maven-changes-plugin\/changes.html\">display release changes in maven<\/a>, <a href=\"\/wordpress\/archives\/1396\">connecting to the QuickBooks Online API<\/a> and writing an employee review (after the first one).<\/p>\n<p>The main difference between these tasks is the amount of context needed. With mapping tasks, you have to have your head up and be &#8220;looking around&#8221; at the problem landscape. With GPS tasks, you can put your head down and just &#8220;drive&#8221; toward task completion.<\/p>\n<p>If you do a GPS task often enough, you&#8217;ll start to acquire context, just as if you drive with a GPS around a new city for a few days, you start to see how the streets and areas fit together. The first time you do something relatively complex, like setting up a new server, hiring or making a department budget, it will be a mapping task&#8211;but after a few times it may turn into a GPS task (especially if you document your process).<\/p>\n<p>Next time you take on a task at work, think about whether it is a complex, big picture task that would be best handled by mapping, or a quick, &#8220;gotta get this done&#8221; task that you don&#8217;t need to fully understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently spent a long time in the car, driving cross country. I had a GPS that led me from across the USA, including through New York City, at 60-80 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifehack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1713"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1720,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions\/1720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}