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In my experience the primary way knowledge workers get into trouble is over-reporting progress on a task, then half-assing it at the end or making excuses. Thi
by zxcmx 6y ago
In my experience the primary way knowledge workers get into trouble is over-reporting progress on a task, then half-assing it at the end or making excuses.
This might be due to procrastination, personal issues, distraction, other job pressures, lack of direction / guidance on the task or many other reasons, some of them good.
The problem is succumbing to the temptation to report progress when there really hasn't been any.
- umvi 6y ago> The problem is succumbing to the temptation to report progress when there really hasn't been any. Just today at stand up I said I was going to "wrap up" a story I had been working on for several days. In reality I have not written a single line of code, so by "wrap up" I meant "start and finish coding". Here's how I rationalized it though: It's not like I've done nothing, the past few days I've been mentally digesting the story and trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together. I've been researching different solutions online, reading through GitHub and StackOverflow. I thought about it a lot, even when not at work (i.e. in the shower or laying in bed). Now that I think I've fully worked out the solution in my mind, actually coding it is the easy part. Sometimes I hit a snag, but more often than not, I can just iteratively breeze through the implementation. - I like to solve
- m463 6y agoHeck, even presenting your status here on hn might even be considered progress towards completion. In fact, reading my comment will probably help you get in the zone to write the code just before deadline!