3 ms·
I've heard the term "effort asymmetry" used for this phenomenon. If someone can spend five minutes of their own time to create a days worth of work for you, th
by underwater 5y ago
I've heard the term "effort asymmetry" used for this phenomenon.
If someone can spend five minutes of their own time to create a days worth of work for you, they will do that without any hesitation. If you require them to spend fifteen minutes instead, then all of a sudden these urgent requests go away.
- pm90 5y agoWow. I’ve understood this viscerally but it’s great to be able to describe it explicitly this way. Having been both on the sending and receiving end of this, I’m somewhat reflexively hesitant to ask others to do things for me “on a top priority” unless there’s a really good reason (most often a production outage). I take a somewhat gentler view in that requesters may often not be aware of the effort required by you. If you’re able to communicate that, very often that’s enough for them to reconsider their ask or it’s priority. Of course there will be a handful of jerks who always want their requests to be prioritized.
- cbushko 5y ago"Effort Asymmetry". That is a fantastic phrase and is so true.