I read Slack about the time it was written, and this theme has stuck with me through the years. I start feeling it whenever I'm trying to go faster than I know

I read Slack about the time it was written, and this theme has stuck with me through the years. I start feeling it whenever I'm trying to go faster than I know that I can go. Both the stress and this "law" remind me to pick the high priority thing (requires some wisdom) and the rest will have to wait. So the minor thing the article leaves out is that DeMarco cites this as Lister's Law: People under time pressure do not think faster. I couldn't find a nice primary source for that. Here's the best I found: https://medium.com/@jasonrigden/the-eponymous-laws-of-computer-science-8d7068658563 https://medium.com/@jasonrigden/the-eponymous-laws-of-comput... It's nice from time to time to turn your mind out to pasture and lazily reflect on just whatever. Those times can be surprisingly productive and refreshing. But for me at least, if I'm trying to drive my brain through productive knowledge work, whether that's designing an api or algorithm or implementation, there is a top speed. And unless I'm kidding myself, I can work at that top speed as a choice of will. And no amount of pressure can make my mind put the pieces together faster. Now pressure to a point will keep me from letting things like HN distract me. Beyond that point, additional pressure will eventually hurt my ability to concentrate, and might even cause me to bail. Just being transparent here. Edit: BTW, DeMarco's book was written mostly from the perspective of managers and the pressure they place on others as they organize the workplace.