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Dimensional Reframing - Think Along a New Axis

Summary

This episode introduces the concept of dimensional reframing as a tool to overcome perception limitations when dealing with overwhelming backlogs or difficult decisions. The host explains that many problems feel unsolvable because we’re viewing them through a limited set of dimensions, and by adding new axes to our thinking, we can create more effective prioritization mechanisms.

The episode begins with the common scenario of having a large bug backlog that never seems to get addressed. Traditional approaches like prioritizing every item or estimating impact often fail because they don’t create actionable frameworks. The host suggests adding the dimension of time by creating a fixed-size bucket (like five bugs per sprint) and selecting items from the backlog to fill that space. This creates deadlines and brings important work into the actual workflow rather than keeping it quarantined.

Several practical examples illustrate how dimensional reframing works in different contexts. For personal task management, adding an energy dimension helps match tasks to your current energy levels for optimal productivity. The Getting Things Done (GTD) framework uses context as a dimension to show what’s actionable in your current situation. The KonMari method introduces joy as a new axis for deciding what to keep when decluttering, fundamentally changing outcomes from what utility-based decisions would produce.

The key insight is that dimensional reframing helps make decisions by providing new criteria that matter to you. Whether at individual or batch levels, adding meaningful dimensions—whether data-driven like numbers or qualitative like joy—creates new perspectives that transform how you approach problems. This method applies equally to professional bug management and personal life decisions, offering a versatile tool for clearer thinking and better outcomes.

Recommendations

Frameworks

  • Getting Things Done (GTD) — Mentioned as an example of using context as a dimension for task management, helping determine what’s actionable based on your current situation rather than just overall priority.
  • KonMari Method — Described as using joy as a new dimension for decluttering decisions, fundamentally changing outcomes from what utility-based approaches would produce by focusing on what sparks joy.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to the problem of overwhelming backlogs — The episode opens by acknowledging the common experience of having a large backlog of bugs or tasks that never seem to get addressed. The host explains that these items often aren’t truly important, or their importance isn’t well understood, leading to perpetual postponement. This sets up the core problem that dimensional reframing aims to solve.
  • 00:01:23 — Introducing dimensional reframing as a solution — The host introduces dimensional reframing as a basic thinking tool that applies to backlog management and many other problems. The concept involves changing how you think about a problem by considering a new dimension you hadn’t previously accounted for. This addresses the limitation of perception that makes problems seem unsolvable with current frameworks.
  • 00:03:53 — Applying time dimension to bug management — The first practical example shows how adding the dimension of time transforms bug management. Instead of trying to prioritize everything, create a fixed-size bucket (like five bugs per sprint) and select items from the backlog to fill it. This creates deadlines and brings important work into the actual workflow, providing a prioritization mechanism that’s more actionable than traditional sorting methods.
  • 00:06:11 — Energy dimension for personal task management — For personal task management, adding an energy dimension helps match tasks to your current energy levels. High-energy tasks should be done when you have high energy, while low-energy tasks fit low-energy periods. This requires tracking your energy patterns and assigning energy requirements to tasks, creating a more effective personal productivity system.
  • 00:07:57 — Context dimension from Getting Things Done — The Getting Things Done (GTD) framework uses context as a dimension to determine what’s actionable. By categorizing tasks by location or situation (computer, errands, home), you can see what’s highest priority in your current context rather than just overall priority. This makes tasks more actionable when you’re in the right situation to complete them.
  • 00:09:00 — Joy dimension from the KonMari method — Marie Kondo’s KonMari method introduces joy as a new dimension for decluttering decisions. Instead of using utility alone, considering whether items spark joy fundamentally changes what gets kept versus discarded. This dimensional reframing leads to different outcomes than traditional methods, keeping meaningful items that might have been discarded and discarding useful items that don’t bring joy.
  • 00:11:01 — How dimensional reframing enables better decisions — The host explains that dimensional reframing works by providing new criteria that help you make decisions. The added dimensions give you information you care about to guide choices, whether at individual or batch levels. When dimensions are data-driven or measurable, they become even more powerful for sorting and prioritizing effectively.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2025-03-26T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:12:57

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] You probably have a big backlog of bugs, and you’re not going to get any shame here.

[00:00:20] We all have those.

[00:00:22] The junk drawer, the long list of items that maybe you’ll get to one day if it ever becomes

[00:00:29] important enough.

[00:00:31] The thing is, in so many cases, it never does become important.

[00:00:39] And arguably, it never was important in the first place.

[00:00:44] Or at least, the importance wasn’t well understood.

[00:00:49] And other work, other opportunities took its place.

[00:00:56] You could make the argument that something in that list is important, that something

[00:01:03] in there is being ignored, and it shouldn’t be.

[00:01:07] It should be the most important thing that your team addresses, that it needs to be prioritized

[00:01:14] the highest.

[00:01:16] But it’s hard to know.

[00:01:18] It’s hard to look at that big list and make sense of it.

[00:01:23] In today’s episode, I’m going to give you a very basic tool or a model of thinking that

[00:01:30] applies to this situation and many others.

[00:01:35] So it’s hard to understand what specifically you should do with this big bucket.

[00:01:43] And there’s a lot of different approaches you could take.

[00:01:47] So we’re not giving you a magic bullet here on this episode.

[00:01:53] You could try to prioritize every item in the backlog and try to keep it up to date.

[00:02:01] Well, now you probably have two different backlogs.

[00:02:07] And you’ve had to quarantine this part of the backlog so that it doesn’t get in the way.

[00:02:15] Once again, you found yourself in a position where, despite being prioritized, despite

[00:02:21] having all of those things figured out, it still isn’t really getting space with your

[00:02:28] real work.

[00:02:30] So what do you do next?

[00:02:32] Well, you could estimate the impact of these items.

[00:02:37] You could try to determine the value of the items.

[00:02:42] But even then, you’re going to have to figure out how to organize them in a way that you

[00:02:47] can execute on them.

[00:02:49] So I want to give you a way to change this problem altogether.

[00:02:54] And this applies not just to this problem, but to most problems where your perception

[00:03:00] seems limited.

[00:03:04] Quite literally, your perception is limited.

[00:03:10] We want to change that.

[00:03:12] So what we’re going to do is something called dimensional reframing.

[00:03:17] What does this mean?

[00:03:19] It means to change the way you’re thinking about a given problem to respect and take

[00:03:27] into account a particular new dimension that you hadn’t considered before.

[00:03:36] You’re adding a dimension.

[00:03:37] That’s why we say your perception is limited, because there is a dimension that you’re not

[00:03:42] looking at about this problem.

[00:03:45] So in this case, what I’ve seen be successful is to change the way you’re thinking about

[00:03:53] your bug management process and add the dimension of time.

[00:04:00] What this really looks like is having a bucket that is only so large.

[00:04:07] These are the bugs that you’re going to address in a given time period.

[00:04:11] Maybe that’s five bugs over the course of a sprint.

[00:04:16] And when you have those five slots identified, you next go to that backlog and try to pull

[00:04:25] out five important things.

[00:04:29] The truth is, nobody is going to judge whether or not you picked the five right things, because

[00:04:35] If you don’t understand the priority of your own bug backlog, certainly no one else will

[00:04:39] either.

[00:04:41] So what you’re trying to do is find five things that you think are in the top 10%, maybe even

[00:04:48] the top 20%, is you’re going to deliver value and you slot those into that slot of five

[00:04:57] or that space that you’ve made.

[00:05:00] Now the key insight isn’t how you manage your bugs.

[00:05:02] Of course, this is just a tactic that you can use and there’s a hundred other ways to

[00:05:07] manage bug backlogs.

[00:05:09] Don’t go away thinking this is the only way to do it.

[00:05:13] The important thing is the perspective shift that this provides.

[00:05:18] What you’ve done is you’ve created a prioritization mechanism.

[00:05:26] Not just creating a sorting in a quarantined off location, you’re bringing the important

[00:05:34] things into the line of work and you’re giving them a specific dimension, which is time.

[00:05:43] In a way, you’re setting a deadline on these bugs.

[00:05:47] And so the dimensional reframing here is how can I look at these bugs, not in terms of

[00:05:54] relative priority or in terms of which ones I feel like doing whenever, but instead which

[00:06:01] ones am I going to commit to doing in the next two weeks or this quarter for that matter?

[00:06:09] Let’s take a different, totally different example.

[00:06:11] Let’s imagine that you have a big backlog of tasks, personal tasks in your task manager

[00:06:16] or in your notes app or however you manage these things.

[00:06:21] And it feels overwhelming.

[00:06:22] It’s hard to know when to do what.

[00:06:27] And especially if you are someone like me who has a lot of other things going on.

[00:06:32] I’ve got kids, I have many hobbies, I have a job and a lot of that takes energy away

[00:06:38] from me.

[00:06:39] So if you were to sit down and just write out kind of your daily experience, then you’re

[00:06:46] going to notice words that might pop out as an axis.

[00:06:51] In this case, I said energy.

[00:06:54] So if you’re looking at your tasks, you might want to pick a task that matches your energy

[00:07:00] level.

[00:07:02] Because think about it, if you were to do a lower energy task when you have a high amount

[00:07:07] of energy and you might get bored, it certainly isn’t the most effective use of your time

[00:07:13] because when you’re lower energy and you try to do a high energy task, you may not be bored,

[00:07:19] but you might be too tired to accomplish the task in the first place.

[00:07:23] So you want to take advantage of matching your energy level to whatever the task’s requirement

[00:07:29] is.

[00:07:30] This is a new dimension that you may not have thought about actually thinking about your

[00:07:35] tasks through that lens.

[00:07:38] So what that would maybe entail is being able to track your various energy levels throughout

[00:07:45] the day and then assigning energy levels to those tasks.

[00:07:51] Another good example of this comes from getting things done, the task management framework.

[00:07:57] Once again, nothing is a silver bullet.

[00:07:59] So don’t take this as your sign to go learn GTD or anything like that.

[00:08:05] But one of the things they do is they identify places, so contexts.

[00:08:12] I think about this as outside, inside, at my computer, out, running errands.

[00:08:18] These are different contexts where I might have something to do.

[00:08:22] And whenever I’m in that context, if I were to look at just pure priorities, for example,

[00:08:29] that’s a single axis, what I think is most important for the day, those priorities may

[00:08:35] not necessarily match my current context, so those things are not actionable.

[00:08:39] So I would have to go down that list to try to find something that is actionable.

[00:08:45] If I had my context defined, then I could clearly show what is highest priority in my

[00:08:53] current context.

[00:08:55] There’s a specific example of this that you might be aware of, might be relevant to you.

[00:09:00] If you’ve cleaned out your closet recently, Marie Kondo came out with the KonMari method

[00:09:08] and this is probably about 10 years ago or so.

[00:09:11] And the idea is to introduce the axis of joy when you’re trying to sort through your items

[00:09:19] and decide what to keep and what to throw away.

[00:09:22] Previously, you might have used a different axis like utility.

[00:09:28] Maybe utility overlaps with joy, but it is not the same thing.

[00:09:33] So what this provided was a new way of thinking about what to keep and what to give away,

[00:09:40] or to donate and throw in the trash.

[00:09:43] And for some people, what this meant was keeping things that may have otherwise been seen as

[00:09:51] just trinkets or junk, right, that may have been seen as superfluous.

[00:09:58] But because that item brought somebody a bit of joy under the KonMari method, because the

[00:10:04] KonMari method utilizes a dimensional reframing where joy is a new axis that you can think

[00:10:12] on, then you change your prioritization method, right?

[00:10:18] You change your way of thinking about the topic.

[00:10:22] And this is a clear change, like a fundamental change in outcome from that exercise because

[00:10:31] of the dimensional reframing.

[00:10:34] There are things that would have landed in the keep pile that don’t actually matter all

[00:10:39] that much to you, you know, it’s not really important to you.

[00:10:43] And then there’s things that would land in the give away pile or the throw away pile

[00:10:48] that you would feel a little sad about leaving behind or about giving away.

[00:10:55] And so dimensional reframing can be used in so many different contexts.

[00:11:01] The key method here is to try to identify something that you may actually care about,

[00:11:08] right, something that can help you make a decision, for example.

[00:11:13] In every case in this discussion today, the dimensions that we’ve added helped us make

[00:11:21] decisions.

[00:11:24] That is the critical factor.

[00:11:26] So when you have a dimensional reframing, you are giving yourself the opportunity to

[00:11:31] key off of information that you care about in order to make the decision.

[00:11:37] And you can do this both at the individual level, so if you’re looking at a singular

[00:11:42] But you can also do this at that batch level when you’re looking at a list of things, especially

[00:11:48] if the axis that you’re talking about is actually data driven in some way, right?

[00:11:55] You can sort it, it’s some kind of magnitude, maybe it’s a number, maybe it’s some kind

[00:12:01] of tag.

[00:12:02] So this method, it provides a new perspective, right?

[00:12:08] This way of thinking, of adding a new axis to whatever it is that you’re thinking about

[00:12:14] can help you see it from a different perspective.

[00:12:16] Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:12:19] Hopefully this will be an inspiring concept to you as you go into your work or even into

[00:12:26] your personal life to think about things from a new axis, adding a new axis to think along.

[00:12:33] Thank you so much for listening.

[00:12:35] If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to review the podcast in iTunes.

[00:12:42] iTunes is the best place to do it, or whatever podcasting app you use beyond iTunes.

[00:12:48] Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, enjoy your tea.

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