A surprising amount of our time is spent sorting things to create value.
They sort the rotten cranberries from the good ones to ensure that the bag at the market is worth buying. And we sort the movies worth watching, the bargains worth pursuing and the news worth reading. Editors, gold miners and detectives are mostly in the sorting business.
Organized education uses sorting both as a motivation tool and a way to ensure that the graduates it produces meet spec.
Not only do we sort, we are often sorted.
Freelancers and job seekers are sorted into groups, and the best ones sort their potential clients and clients before wasting their time.
Lazy sorting is distracting, expensive and often toxic. Relying on false proxies, easily measured but irrelevant, is a common sorting trap.
And getting better at sorting might be the single most effective improvement we can make in our work. It’s not difficult to improve if we focus on it.