LJI S9.7, No True Scotsman

[muchtooarrogant]

When faced with a time sensitive task, how many of you take the time you know you'll require to finish said task, and double it? You would think, in a culture driven by numerous measures of productivity, that consistently doing this would give you the reputation of being an inefficient, lazy, and none too bright worker. I assure you, such is not

Comments

[itsjustc]

One place I worked the boss used to set ridiculous unachievable deadlines and I was constantly having to say "The machine/computer/anything non human takes 'this' long therefore no... it cannot be finished 3 hours earlier!" here I was seen as a trouble-making young woman for arguing with the boss. When I moved jobs the new boss would ask me how long a task would take, my experience with my previous boss led me to come up with the x2 idea without anyone ever telling me about it. In that job I was praised because I always finished the work far earlier than was expected. :)

[muchtooarrogant]

In truth, I've been pretty fortunate. The bosses I've had over the years have had fairly reasonable expectations when deadlines were involved, but I always have heard stories of those who weren't.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Dan

[eternal_ot]

LOL..now I just need to try that out..;)

[muchtooarrogant]

Oh Hell, I just realized what I forgot to put at the end of this entry...

muchtooarrogant will not be held responsible for any reader who tries out this strategy, and has it utterly fail! *grin*

Thanks so much for reading and commenting.

Dan

[eternal_ot]

LOL..arrgh..not fair..;)..:D ..you are welcome!

[i_17bingo]

If the deadline was around the amount of time I could really do the job, often failed to hit it, even if I could have made it work. I'd learned from previous gigs that the only reward you get for busting your ass too hard is the expectation that you can work at that level all the time.

[muchtooarrogant]

So true! I read a sci-fi piece once where the narrator was explaining why they spent most of their life as an F*up, except for those occasional moments of rare brilliance. The brilliance was actually there all the time, it just wasn't worth showing it. LOL Wish I could remember what story/author that was... Something I read in high school.

Thanks for reading and commenting. :)

Dan

[halfshellvenus]

I'm in a business where Work Breakdown Structures are very much the thing, and they help us set our _ideal_ goals-- though someone higher up always has a "drop-dead date" in mind that cannot be budged. The more reasonable goal is what happens when new duties/bugs/reviewing other people's features/bugs interferes in the meantime...

[muchtooarrogant]

Ah yes, structure can be good, so long as it's used reasonably. I know exactly what you mean about getting sidetracked too; no matter what strategy you use, it's the hundred small things that come up during the day that are so difficult to account for.

Thanks for reading and commenting. :)

Dan

[jem0000000]

Lol! What happens when you have an official list of how long each task takes?

[muchtooarrogant]

Ha, funny thing is, back when I was a contract trainer for the state of Texas, we were governed by very specific criteria that specified, among other things, exactly how long a given training should take. Of course, those lovely little specs never took real life into account, and so you could always tweek them if you needed to. The rule of the game there was to document everything. As long as you could point to the training report you filed and say, "I explained that under the section labeled Training Environment in item five," you were good

[jem0000000]

Lol! 'Filed documents which contributed to new training specifications' doesn't fit on a resume?

You're welcome.