Which is faster: posting a blog, or removing a clog?
Thursday, August 24th, 2006Unclogging the drain in my bathroom sink: 10 minutes
Posting yesterday’s blog entry: 2 hours
My mental estimation has those two almost switched opposite. So I think, “I could post a blog entry ‘real quick’.” Right… And I think, “Wow, this is the 42nd time it’s taken more than 5 minutes for the sink to drain. I should probably take care of that. Well, look at the time…maybe later.”
Recently, I’ve been trying to pay attention to the nearly automatic time estimates I make when I decide “Do, Delegate, Defer”. In order for the “Two Minute Rule”, or any such heuristic to work, you have to have a decent sense of how long something will take, right? I find that when this time estimating mechanism is inappropriately calibrated, the whole machine breaks down.
The result? Clogged pipes. Strangely, though, once in “pipe unclogging” mode, a lot of things get cleaned out. Just prior the sink unclogging effort, I’d completed a “trusted system” unclogging effort, which to my surprise (this time…) took only slightly longer than the sink.
BTW, normally, a blog post doesn’t take two hours. But in this case, what began as “I’ll make a quick post,” turned into, “man, I’m sick of this blog spam, I’ll just add an anti-spam plug-in ‘real quick’.” Wrong Answer. “Oh, well, I have to upgrade WordPress ‘real quick’ to install that plug-in.” Wrong Answer. “Oh, well, the upgrade won’t overwrite my customizations.” Wrong Answer. So, basically, every ‘real quick’, cost me 30 more minutes. Does this only happen to me?
