Posts Tagged: urgency

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12
Feb 09

Deadline not met? Unacceptable.

Zen Habits writes:

We live our lives around the clock. We wake up at a certain time, work on a schedule and base our performance on the amount of time it takes us to do things. More things done in less time = good. More time needed? Deadline not met? Unacceptable.

But it’s not just the clock that gives us anxiety; it’s basing our worth on how productive we are. We have this false belief that if we just finish everything on our to do lists, we’ll be done. After that, we can finally be happy, right? Unfortunately, that time never comes.

I think the root problem is not with a wish to be productive, but more to do with the fundamental disconnect between planning projects and executing them. If you took the script of how a project actually unfolded, and sent it back in time to when the project was being planned, most people would look at it and say disagree: “it won’t really happen that way”. Planning seems to invariably hope for the best (the happy path) and more accurate dates seem to feel invariably pessimistic with a lot of padding. This, I think, is the disconnect with deadlines and where the anxiety comes from.

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15
Sep 08

Predicting the Future, Planning Projects

To follow up on my previous post about estiquotes, and 37signals post on late projects: No one can predict the future, and project estimates are an educated guess at best.

In my own personal life, I find I can only vaguely predict what is happening this week. Next week’s events? I might just as easily name the date that Christ is to return. Work is no different – what I think I can accomplish for the day at 8am is wildly different than what was accomplished when I close up shop for the day.

Project planning is the same way. It is reasonably easy to predetermine a sequence of events, but identifying dates for when they will happen is largely meaningless.

You might say I just don’t have talent, or I am not thinking the project through well enough, but tell me this: when you know you have to cancel a meeting, do you know it months ahead of time? weeks? I find meetings are most often cancelled an hour before they start, and often the lead time is less than 5 minutes.

If we can’t habitually predict today’s events with accuracy, how can we possibly predict events weeks or months later?

Jason says it best

We release things when they are ready to be released, not based [on] a we-can-predict-the-future schedule.

Priorities shift, products change, new ideas bubble up, we discover new techniques and concepts, mistakes are made, external circumstances reveal themselves.

All those things make schedules a waste of time. They don’t account for surprises, new opportunities, gut feel, and human error. Schedules are too theoretical for our tastes.

The only time we start thinking about dates are when we’re really close to release. Then we can say “let’s try to get this out next Monday” or “Let’s do what we can over the next couple week and then go live with it.”

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9
Sep 08

The Myth of Multitasking

I’ve discussed multitasking before, but it was top of my mind after Merlin posted a quote by Eideteker:

Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you’d rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously.

Mr. Mann says:

“Multi-taskers” are really just splitting their time and attention into smaller slices than you; no one can really do more than one thing at a time.

Be sure to check out the related podcast episode on the topic, or the post How Doing It All Gets Nothing Done over at Get Rich Slowly.

Update: on a reread of the post, it appears that I said “Merlin” one to many times. It’s fixed now.

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21
May 08

Quotes: Haste, Delete, Touchy-Feely, Corp Culture, Principles, Fear, Change

“Haste is a form of violence” Sarah Hatter

“With my patented “Ignore for a Week, Then Just Delete” system, you’ll get through your email faster than with any other system, guaranteed.” John Gruber via Twitter

“Let’s just have some ridiculous touchy-feely resolution.” Merlin Mann MacBreak Weekly #42

Aaron Mentele via Twitter

“A great way to think about what your principles are is to complete this sentence: “I would give others totally free rein to do this as long as they …” – what?” Getting Things Done by David Allen p66

“Fear, in other words, is a tax, and al-Qaeda and its ilk have done better at extracting it from Americans than the Internal Revenue Service…Never before have so few terrorized so many with so little.” Here’s How America Looks to the World By Josef Joffe

“everyone can be measured by his adaptability to change.” Robert Rauschenberg

“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” George Patton


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1
May 08

Juggling Crises

Some posts I’ve enjoyed reading recently from Signal vs. Noise:

Urgency is poisonous
“One thing I’ve come to realize is that urgency is overrated. In fact, I’ve come to believe urgency is poisonous. Urgency may get things done a few days sooner, but what does it cost in morale? Few things burn morale like urgency. Urgency is acidic.”

Why I love working with family people
“This is what companies need, startups or not. They need constraints and especially constraints on how often you can play the hero card to Get This Very Important Project Done.”

Why do we plan up front?
“Plans are a strategy against uncertainty. The problem is, they only make you certain of your imagination.”


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