So, I wanted to share a bit about this thing I tried recently, something connected to a name I kept bumping into here and there – david truitt. It wasn’t from some big conference or anything, more like whispers on forums and a mention from a colleague.
Trying out the idea
What caught my ear was this particular way of tackling tasks he supposedly talked about. Now, I didn’t find some official guide, it was more like hearsay, you know? The gist I got was something like: forget the grand plan, just focus laser-sharp on the very next physical action you need to take. Nothing else. Sounds simple, maybe too simple, right?
Anyway, I decided to give it a whirl. My desk, my project list… it often feels like a giant mess. Overwhelming sometimes. So, one Monday morning, instead of mapping out the whole week or even the whole day, I just picked one task. And then I asked myself, okay, what’s the absolute first step? Not ‘plan the feature’, not ‘write the code’, but maybe ‘open the project file’ or ‘find that specific email’. Seriously, that basic.
Getting into it
I started doing just that. Opened the file. Okay, done. What’s next? ‘Read the requirements doc again, just the first section.’ Did that. It felt… weird. Slow. Almost like I wasn’t being productive because I wasn’t juggling five things in my head. My usual habit is to build this big mental picture, all the steps laid out. This felt like walking in the dark with a tiny flashlight.
There was this one afternoon I was stuck on a really annoying bug. Normally, I’d draw diagrams, list possibilities, maybe step away for coffee to think big picture. But I was trying the ‘truitt’ thing, so I forced myself: “What’s the next small thing I can try?” It was adding a simple debug message. So I did just that. Compiled. Ran it. Looked at the output. Okay, that told me something tiny. “What’s the next tiny step?” Changed one variable. Compiled. Ran it. It was painstaking. Felt like trudging through mud.
What happened?
Here’s the funny part. Sometimes, this actually worked surprisingly well. For those tasks where I usually procrastinate because they look too big, just focusing on the immediate tiny step got me moving. Like, just starting felt easier. And occasionally, like with that bug, the slow, methodical step-by-step process actually led me right to the solution without getting lost in complex theories that weren’t even relevant.
But, and it’s a big but, it wasn’t a silver bullet. Not even close. There were times I really needed that bigger picture. I’d follow the ‘next step’ logic and end up realising an hour later that the whole direction was wrong, something a bit of upfront planning would have revealed. It felt inefficient then. And for creative tasks, sometimes you need that space to brainstorm and connect dots, not just focus on the immediate next action.
So, my thoughts
In the end, trying this ‘david truitt’ approach, or at least my interpretation of it, was interesting. It didn’t revolutionize my workflow. It’s not something I use all the time now. But it gave me another tool. When I feel stuck or overwhelmed by a task, I sometimes pull this trick out. “Okay, forget everything else. What’s the absolute next tiny thing I need to do?” Get that done, then ask again. It helps break the inertia.
So yeah, it wasn’t magic. It has its moments, good and bad. Like most things, it’s about figuring out when it fits and when it doesn’t. Just another little experiment in the ongoing process of figuring out how to get stuff done.
