“JUST”
It's one of the worst four-letter words I know. Whenever I catch myself using it, I stop and apologize. And when I hear it, I hold up my hand and stop the person speaking.
Let me give you some examples from last week…
- “Just put a form up to collect their e-mail…”
- “Just make it so they can login with Facebook…”
- “I'll just throw it in a new database field.”
- “We can just launch a new database server…”
- “Lets just let them post notes, like Twitter does…”
A synonym I often hear is “simply”.
- “Let's simply use Redis for this…”
- “We'll simply spin up another AWS server…”
- “It should be simple to reuse the Atlas library for that.”
If you use the words “just” or “simply”, you might have forgotten how hard the technical details can be. I cover how to fix this in Chapter 2 of my book, 7 Habits that Ruin your Technical Team.
Or, you might be pushing the team too hard, and glossing over the details. That's covered in Chapter 5 of the book.
What if you're not saying it, but you're hearing it?
Then it's time to stop the conversation, and politely ask for the missing details. This used to be hard for me, because it made me feel like I was asking “stupid” questions. For many years I felt that if I asked people to explain what they meant, I'd look dumb. Or unprofessional. Or I'd be wasting their time.
I finally realized that professionals aren't content with generalities or vague requirements. They stop and ask for specifics, even at the risk of looking dumb. They have the confidence to know they aren't dumb, and to not pretend to understand something they don't.
You can use phrases like…
- “Let's pause so I can clarify what you mean. Are you suggesting that we…”
- “Wait, before we continue, can you explain that feature more?”
- “Going back to what you said, can you explain how you would implement that?”
- “I might be a bit slow here, but can you explain?”
Lullaby Language
Gerald Weinberg calls “just” an example of Lullaby Language, which “lulls your mind into a false sense of security, yet remains ambiguous enough to allow for the opposite interpretation.”
He groups it with words like “should”, “soon”, “very” and “trivial”. All perfectly nice words that we see every day, but can carry a lot of hidden ambiguity an assumptions.
How I learned to stop the conversation
My boss, Milind, was great at this. When I was promoted to Team Lead I was brought into a whole new world of meetings and discussions, and I would keep my mouth shut when someone used the word “Just”, or spoke in vague terms. I didn't want someone to think I wasn't fit for the job, or that I was having trouble keeping up. Instead, I nodded and smiled, looking like I was tracking with them.
But Milind knew it was dangerous to accept generalities or misunderstandings. He would simply stop a large group conversation with the phrase, “Maybe I'm missing something here, but can you explain that in more detail?” Everyone would look at him, the speaker would pause, and then back up to cover the “just” part in more detail.
And low and behold, 90% of the time it was revealed that the person who glossed over the details had oversimplified something important. Or, was simply wrong about an assumption. That means 90% of the time we were able to correct the discussion in the moment, and move forward with better information.
And the 10% of the time there wasn't a problem? The explanation simply clarified everyone's understanding and we quickly moved forward. Or, it opened the door to other unspoken questions from the group.
Watching Milind do this made me feel confident enough to try it. Now I do it often, as really understanding what someone is telling me is the most important thing. It allows me to correct misunderstandings and assumptions in the moment, instead of wasting time working in the wrong direction.
Now it's your turn
How often do you hear the word “just” or “simply”, and just nod in agreement?
How could you pause the conversation and change the conversation to move in a different direction?
How often do you use these words, especially when setting expectations or defining requirements?
Latest comments (31)
Thank you for this post! I especially appreciate your responses to how to push back against "just", "simply", etc. I think it's so important, and I'm going to be using these with confidence at work during technical convos, my favorite response is: “Maybe I'm missing something here, but can you explain that in more detail?”
In the company I work for, I often hear fastly and [can we take] 2 seconds, which are on the same toxic line as just.
Also, I often exhume Brad Frost’s article about the exactly same topic: Just.
Thank you Marcus!
This is, hands down, one of my favorite posts ever in this community.
We joke about the "just" word a lot at my current job because we have been burned by it multiple times in the past, so we always repeat it whenever one of us says it louder than them before they finish to remind them to be careful about that assumption and have a laugh at the same time.
Another one that gets my hair stand straight up: "very important". I have read and heard that so often in my carrier in business meetings and Powerpoint presentations that I often thought, "why would you tell me something unimportant and waste my time".
So I am not the only one that gets at least 2 times a day annoyed for this abuse of the English words "just", "simply" and "easy". It has cost me lots of hours, days sometimes, that although it was mentioned to be easy, the explanation was so limited that I have thrown much good stuff overboard because of this.
The hardest thing is to assume that things are not easy and that nevertheless one is able to explain clearly how to make it to look easy.
Currently I am learning ReactJS and man, so many packages (NPM) have such a lack of clear documentation and so much "easy" assumptions. Then I think, the developer has so much effort in building something where he believes in and in the end the documentation is so poor that people hesitate to use it. So much time and good effort wasted.
In the old days I worked on IBM AS/400 and there were a ton of manuals, where you always thought that IBM didn't explain enough to make it simple. But at least they took the trouble to do it.
Web world developments is the worst place to be when you want to find clarity and....standards. Everyone is doing it again in its own way...that easy.
Great article, your words, my thoughts.
Thank you, Marcus. I was carrying the thought of writing about this particular issue for some time now - thank you for wording it so well.
Good post,
Underestimating and oversimplifying an issue is a great danger.
Great write up. My Tech lead always uses this term and I literally cringe every time he says it in a conference call meeting. We're working on a monolithic application with a rigorous process - NOTHING is JUST or SIMPLE.
I kind of understand what he's trying to do though (and I hate myself for understanding it). Sometimes, you need to butter up management and try to convince them that the team is a competent bunch. Cringing doesn't stop there though, it's simply annoying when your lead says this and he/she himself/herself doesn't even see the complete picture and just stack up assumptions after assumptions.
I hope I didn't sound like I'm ranting. I really appreciate this write up.
In my last job, we have a "Just jar" -- kinda like a Swear Jar, but for the word "just".
Awesome article, Marcus.
Always found it somewhat amusing when clients use this 4 letter word.
At least thrice a week...It gets annoying. I actually ask people to take it slow and explain it again
Yes, so true. Usually for each "just" or "simply" in a meeting, a new follow up meeting is spawned, where only the one involved decided how "just" will be implemented.
Time estimations from the original meetings ofc are multiplied by at least a factor of 3.
Been avoiding the word since I first read this article. Constant reminder that any changes involves (and creates work for) a number of people. Very rare anything is just that simple.
As a kid I read that John Lennon thought the word "just" was useless, and I've always remembered that and I notice when people use it like that!
What you seem to be irritated with is just someone's vision to be later developed. I can actually see nothing bad in using this 4-letter word. It is often an equivalent of picturing that - what a web page, web app, whetever device is supposed to do - should seem so easy and simple to end user.
I admit, sometimes, the word "just" seems to be used in a way as if the speaker claimed to have just found the simplest possible solution among the ramblings and wants to put an eureka end to the discussion and receive all the glory.
At any rate, "just" should only be an introduction to having a more detailed discussion, having the person explain their expectations, perhaps specify preliminary acceptance criteria, and the tech lead should then come back with the expense of "just".
As a front end developer I know that non-techie people tend to think that we have an arsenal of magic buttons that we just keep in our secret vault, and when a "just" comes - we probably JUST copy and paste it into the code.
But usually visionaires don't mean to offend developers or tech leads, and are open to take feedback.
When I sometimes rethink my reactions to this "just"-type of talks, I find my overreacting to actually be a problem in my bad interpretation of someone's intention. I think Milind's way of handling the 4-letter word is perfect as it throws the ball into the right hands at the moment of saying that word.
+1. You should develop this into a full article. I can relate to what Marcus is saying because I've been at the receiving end of the just word, but I also know that not everybody is out to get you by just using just