Dead Reckoning: Navigating an Ocean of Tasks and Intentions

Before GPS, sailors estimated position from last known location, approximated speed, and heading.

I haven't posted here in quite some time. Despite all the ideas kicking around in my head, I look up now and it's so many months since my last post...what happened? Where'd the time go?

Prior to the 18th century, if you were a sailor navigating in open water, you were using the technique of dead reckoning. Current position is estimated from last known position combined with approximated speed and heading...which means it's subject to drift, or what engineers would call "stacking tolerances." Small errors compound. Each calculation inherits the inaccuracy of the last. The longer this drift continues unaddressed, the more difficult the course correction will be.

Where I Lost the Thread

I haven't posted in a while. Work, training, the usual accumulation of competing demands, nothing dramatic. Writing, which requires a particular kind of uninterrupted focus, was the first thing to go, and I could have rationalized the gap indefinitely if I hadn't had a prior definition of what this place was supposed to produce.

The mechanism is the same whether you're debugging a distributed pipeline or taking stock of how you're spending your time: you can only identify missing output if you've already defined what output was expected. Most people measure inputs, e.g. hours worked or tasks completed, because inputs are observable. Outputs require an explicit model. A busy system isn't a healthy system; it's a loaded one, and under sufficient load something always gets starved. The question is whether you explicitly chose what's to wait or whether that decision got made by default...and the drift chose for you.

Priority Is Architecture

Such drift isn't a time management problem. Relying on time management as a solution is predicated upon there being available time to manage; most often, and in this case, there isn't. As a system, my resources are nearly fully consumed. What I have is a choice about what runs and what waits, and that choice is an architectural one whether I treat it deliberately or not. So, I will be prioritizing the discourse here on my blog more highly and, in doing so, navigating towards a more satisfying way of thinking and creating.

Dead reckoning doesn't promise a perfect route at all times. Rather, it provides a mechanism for an honest path; derived from what you know, corrected when new information demands it. The sailor who makes it to port isn't the one who never drifts; it's the one who keeps checking the chart and adjusting course until their destination comes into view.