[current]
I've been reading some of those 'context switching is bad' articles... and - well - I seem to be right in the middel of it. I have been for quite some time now. One thing that is even nastier than several projects or tasks in parralel are tasks that
could be completed in a rather short time (15 min. - 1h), but can't. Very often a task that might take about 30min of actual work-time will be spread out over several days for me. Having to wait for client feedback after each iteration... And especially if I need to finish some small tasks to completly switch to one big prolect. For example I came into the office yesterday to finalize and close one task-ticket. That would have taken maybe 2h to do, and I could have moved on to a larger project that's currently just waiting for me to become availeable. I freed the day to get that done. But the info I needed came in around 16:30, so the days was actually wasted. Now of course I could have used the time to do other things... but anything I might have done would have been considerably more involved and have afforded some investment in time to 'get into'. Also I didn't know when exactly that info would arrive, it could have been anytime, and I expected it to be at latest around noon. So I basically idled, researching this and that and getting more and more frustrated. When the info finally arrived, it was too late to really get started doing it. It wouldn't have fit into the 30min timeframe I still had availeable, and also my mind was no longer in a fit state to 'quickly concentrate and get it done'. So I went home. Well, today I did what needed doing first up, and submitted my changes for client-feedback. I think you can guess what happened, can't you? Only 90min later I had feedback, with further corrections and change requests... those where done in about 15min, and submitted for final feedback. Ok, I'm still waiting for that, so I'll need to take up that task again tommorow...
So that's how a 2h task can spread over almost three days abd still not get done. Ok, I really could have time-managed that better, no question. I could have done some other, minor tasks to fill the time spent waiting... But I get to a point where anything I could do to 'fill time' is so involved that I'd like to spend at least one full hour on it without interruptions.
[ by Martin>]
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Martin Spernau
Big things to come (TM) 30th Dez 2002
