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One of the things I find irksome about the business world (and this won't seem relevant to the OP till I explain it) is that, while it places a premium on "fini

One of the things I find irksome about the business world (and this won't seem relevant to the OP till I explain it) is that, while it places a premium on "finishing" and "delivery" (by the way, if you use "deliver" intransitively I will punch you in the face) it also makes it really rare that one can finish anything. It claims to have a culture of "shipping" but employs these people called "executives" whose function is usually to get in the way of people trying to do so. The disorganization of his "brilliant men" (which is a conflation of two types of people already-- the charismatic and the creative) seems to be something the corporate world (at least in 2014 technology) creates. The "brilliant" just fall hardest, I'd argue, because highly creative people (one subtype he describes) tend to be most sensitive to context, and highly charismatic people (the other subtype) can usually assume the failure patterns of the highly creative. The not-finishing culture, I think, is a product of the incoherency of the corporate world. It's not uncommon to see people pass years in Corporate America without achieving anything for reasons not their fault: shifting priorities, projects cancelled for stupid political reasons, "re-orgs", unclear direction. At some point, people learn that Corporate Life is survived not by finishing (in fact, that can be harmful, because now you have support responsibilities) but being able to come up with a story when things outside your control stop you from finishing. The muddling effects of subordination compound this decline of executive function. It's rather sad, to tell the truth. I wish it weren't that way. I don't think it's just "brilliant men" who fail, in this way, amid the jarring incoherency of most business. I think they just crash first and hardest. The rest tend to drift downward over time and underperform silently.

ZenoArrow 13y ago
Yes, michaelochurch, you are correct that the shifting priorities of the work place often make finishing anything hard. But there is another way, and that is to work in secret, and fit this secret work into natural breaks in your normal work. For example, part of my job is running a suite of reports on a monthly basis. Every time I run these reports I do a little work to make them easier/quicker to run next time. Over the space of a year this kind of work can really pay off, and frees up more time to do more satisfying work, but the key is to improve in secret, it's rarely appreciated at the time.

ZenoArrow 13y ago

Yes, michaelochurch, you are correct that the shifting priorities of the work place often make finishing anything hard. But there is another way, and that is to work in secret, and fit this secret work into natural breaks in your normal work. For example, part of my job is running a suite of reports on a monthly basis. Every time I run these reports I do a little work to make them easier/quicker to run next time. Over the space of a year this kind of work can really pay off, and frees up more time to do more satisfying work, but the key is to improve in secret, it's rarely appreciated at the time.