

Being In A Hurry Makes You Slower

Not too long ago I was working on an unfamiliar project, with a technology stack I didn’t really know. I had a short deadline, and (what I thought was) a pretty short assignment. Turns out it wasn’t. Every time I thought I was done the requirements shifted slightly and every time I thought I had solved the last bug a new one appeared.

Because I was pressed for time, I did two things:

In another world where the task had been as small as we thought, these could have been the right decisions.
However as soon as the task became just a little bigger than we thought, neglecting to learn my tools properly made me much less effective. I traded a short-term benefit for a long-term loss.

I’m not saying you should always spend the time to learn how to do everything properly. But if you’re always in a hurry, and you never get the time to slow down, you might have an issue. Likewise, if you have a short deadline for something and you decide that it’s not worth the time, but then the deadline shifts - it’s time to re-evaluate. A deadline and scope that shifts once, will probably shift again.

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