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Productivity is largely dominated by decisions to keep using and deal with a tool which is mediocre for the job or to redesign the tool... and often the best de
by gaze 8y ago
Productivity is largely dominated by decisions to keep using and deal with a tool which is mediocre for the job or to redesign the tool... and often the best decision is to keep using. I've found management of technical debt to be one of the hardest things. Most people either fall into the camp of continuously reinventing the wheel because it's kinda fun, often easy and satisfying, and they can convince themselves that the time invented will pay off, or they just use bad tools and curse the darkness rather than lighting the candle. Some snap back and forth between these two extremes. Having good judgement about this is a rare and valuable skill.
- jeremyjh 8y agoIn my very first job, for some reason they paid for my whole team to go a Covey 7-habits training. This was 20 years ago. The only thing I took away from it is the phrase "sharpen the saw". Sometimes you need to stop working and optimize your tools or workflow a little bit. You have to be careful not to let this become a huge time suck, but if you never do it you are paying a massive opportunity cost.
- gaze 8y agoI think my point is that knowing when to sharpen the saw, if the saw is sharp enough for the job, and knowing when to stop sharpening and start sawing is the hard thing. The general problem here is a combination of estimating the time it will take to finish a project, and a problem of knowing what key problems dominate the final product... themselves two of the hardest things to do.
- jeremyjh 8y agoI have to confess my decisions here are often driven by frustration that reaches a tipping point. But yes, calculating short and long-term payoffs against the investment is very hard.