[teampractices] [Discussion] Term for always prepping for the next thing

[S Page]

On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 10:32 AM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org> wrote:

>  I'm imagining someone whose "todo" queue is growing linearly while their
> "done" pile eternally remains empty. It seems odd that new higher-priority
> work would be coming in so fast that not only can the old work not get done
> first, but the new work can't either.
>

The problem for me comes from ruthless prioritization vs. dealing with new
small inbox issues in the moment. I'm sure I read some advice to do the
latter instead of the overhead of managing an enormous growing pile of
postponed work. Especially with documentation, tagging yet another mail
thread "ought to document this nugget some day" vs. spending
just-a-little-bit more time getting it done here and now. The problems are
a) If there are too many small things you can get done in the moment, then
those moments take over your day.
b) Hoftstadter's Law [1].

I guess the answer is to budget your time better. Thanks for any advice,
though I don't expect any because answering this is not in your quarterly
goals or current sprint :-).

[1] "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into
account Hofstadter's Law." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter's_law

-- 
=S Page  WMF Tech writer
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/teampractices/attachments/20150930/b1cd815a/attachment.html>