141–150 of 220 posts
> Preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing. For some types of work, the work we call prep work is 90% of the work and most of what determines how well the finished product turns out. Painting is a good example. You can grab a bucket of paint and paint brush and start “doing the thing” by slapping paint on the surface. Your paint job is going to be very poor and fail early relative to a professional who properl…
That text is describing my life since 10 years or so. I am in my 30s and lost the capability to do the thing, _any_ thing, with the exception of going out with friends/family/my partner to do social activities. Everything else is literally impossible for me to do. I’m currently kicking off my second attempt to fix this by talking to a psychologist about it. But I am not very hopeful. Still searching for the root caus…
Best way to to train yourself to win again. Start, finish, and celebrate a 1h task. Then half day. etc
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think in this example those prep work items _are_ doing the thing. But then telling people about a new product could also be doing the thing. There’s definitely something to be said for defining what the thing really is being an important part of doing it, but that can also spiral out of control into not doing the thing. I think thingness is more of a variable property of the current thing you are doing. Than a bin…
I'd say for the purposes of this article anything that is required in order to have done the thing is "doing the thing". If you need to read something to get the thing done you are doing the thing. If you already know everything to get started but still read another article you are procrastinating. If you need to sand this part to do a good job painting it, then you are doing the thing. If you just continue sanding w…
I catch myself doing this. I will put off writing a job requisition by spending time on code. I will tell myself, "ugh, I'm just not in the right mental state to write a job req right now. Let me focus on some code until I'm ready." Which never works. I end up getting into a code flow state and that's all I work on for the rest of the day, or until I get interrupted by a meeting.
And then I get back from the meeting and say, "I got interrupted, I should just finish what I started and then I'll write the job reqs." And that never happens. I always pick up yet another coding task instead.
The only way I am ever able to get through admin paperwork is to just admit to myself I hate it but it has to get done, it has to get done right now, no amount of procrastiworking is going to make me stop hating it, so I should just get it over with so it's not sitting like a lead weight in the back of my head. And then when 5pm rolls around, I won't hate myself for letting yet another day go by without having the job reqs written.
But right now it's the weekend.
> Preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing. For some types of work, the work we call prep work is 90% of the work and most of what determines how well the finished product turns out. Painting is a good example. You can grab a bucket of paint and paint brush and start “doing the thing” by slapping paint on the surface. Your paint job is going to be very poor and fail early relative to a professional who properl…
The thing isn't done until the thing is done.
Right but I see this taken too far. Getting side eyed for creating a Jira ticket not doing it now. Dude, I am creating a Jira ticket because I have 100 things to do and need to actual priorise this! If I do stuff in the order of serendipity I will definitely be inefficient.
It does add up though. 1. Ticket 2. Feature branch 3. Write unit test 4. Periodically merge from main. 5. Implement to get tests to pass 6. Push changes 7. Create PR 8. Wait for PR feedback 9. Address feedback and repeat 10. Close and merge PR 11. Automated CI deploy 12. Integration testing as needed 13. Close ticket 14. Include in next prod release All of these are good things. But the overhead is significant. And t…
Quick and dirty does not work in all environments.
> Preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing. For some types of work, the work we call prep work is 90% of the work and most of what determines how well the finished product turns out. Painting is a good example. You can grab a bucket of paint and paint brush and start “doing the thing” by slapping paint on the surface. Your paint job is going to be very poor and fail early relative to a professional who properl…
Things that have caused me to screw up various paint jobs:
- not color matching white paint to my existing white paint, causing a visible color difference
- buying the wrong kind of brush for my paint
- buying cheap brushes and then needing to dig hairs out of the paint
- not priming, which caused me to have to do multiple layers to get good coverage
- buying cheap paint, which together with not priming, caused me to have to do multiple layers to get good coverage
- buying too little paint because I did not estimate carefully and then having to pause mid-job to go buy more paint and extending the total time to more than a week (because I did not have time to finish the job the next day)
- not buying and putting down floor protection which caused a lot of extra time in cleanup and never actually getting the paint out of the crevices in the floorboards
- not taping out the windows and doors which slowed down painting and required a lot of just-in-time cleanups
- taping out carelessly with poor-quality tape, causing paint to get under the tape, and defeating the purpose of taping
- not changing clothes before a tiny paint job and needing to throw away a very decent t-shirt because metal paint does not wash out well
- buying very expensive paint for a rough paint job in my garage because I did not spend a minute to think about the final effect, and wasting a bunch of money for a poor effect
To avoid each of these mistakes you have to spend time not-painting. It's time well spent.
I've tried doing a work breakdown, and watching a pro do it, it seems roughly 0.75 units of time for prep, 1 unit of time for painting, and 0.5 units of time for cleanup. I did not count the time for researching and buying, but once you add commute, it's easy for it to be 0.5 unit of time, depending on size of job. Roughly 1.5x-2x of not-painting to 1x of painting.
You can make many software-development analogies to painting.
If we're mature experience painters, all of these things not-painting things are still "doing things".
I find this applies pretty well to creative work, at least from a general mindset perspective and helps those of us who are prone to procrastinating. It also goes hand in hand with the Cult Of Done Manifesto really well: https://medium.com/@bre/the-cult-of-done-manifesto-724ca1c2f...
> “If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it” These people defo do not have kids… Go have some kids, then lecture me about how to get things done.
> Preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing. For some types of work, the work we call prep work is 90% of the work and most of what determines how well the finished product turns out. Painting is a good example. You can grab a bucket of paint and paint brush and start “doing the thing” by slapping paint on the surface. Your paint job is going to be very poor and fail early relative to a professional who properl…
> Preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing. For some types of work, the work we call prep work is 90% of the work and most of what determines how well the finished product turns out. Painting is a good example. You can grab a bucket of paint and paint brush and start “doing the thing” by slapping paint on the surface. Your paint job is going to be very poor and fail early relative to a professional who properl…
Painting is such a great way to explain this. I've made many mistakes painting myself, and only came to appreciate the amount of extra work involved when I looked closely at how a pro does it. Things that have caused me to screw up various paint jobs: - not color matching white paint to my existing white paint, causing a visible color difference - buying the wrong kind of brush for my paint - buying cheap brushes and…