[HN Gopher] Deadlines as Technology
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Deadlines as Technology
Author : fagnerbrack
Score : 127 points
Date : 2023-05-15 13:36 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.jim-nielsen.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.jim-nielsen.com)
| blablablerg wrote:
| He writes about all these productivity tools and that he stopped
| using them. For me the same, but the one I still use and helps me
| is org mode. It excels at customizability and simplicity. How I
| use it: I write down my plan for the day, and I clock in and
| clock out, keep track on how much time I spend on actual work and
| doing useless stuff (like browsing the internet). When I saw how
| much time of the day you are actually doing nothing during time
| you have decided for your self to be productive, well that was a
| shock.
| tells wrote:
| managing emotions is at the crux of all of this. those
| productivity apps try to remove the emotion from certain
| decisions and give you some organizational help so you can act
| procedurally throughout your day. giving yourself a deadline is
| another approach coming that tries to focus the emotions you
| already feel into a productive force. a deadline will provide
| clarity because your subconscious will try to prioritize it over
| the small details that those productivity apps will have you
| continuously document, which can be a pain and sometimes create
| more friction when you're stuck with zero momentum.
|
| if your life is already moving fast and you are managing a ton of
| different things, I think those productivity apps will provide a
| great resource to remind you of other things that need to get
| done and remove the friction that comes with context switching.
| revskill wrote:
| Proscatination is the real issue, not deadlines.
|
| People without procastination (or the ones who knows how to
| resolve procastination) won't need deadlines.
|
| It's not an issue that you have no deadlines but you still do it.
| It's fine.
|
| But if you delaying action you wanna do, you're missing many
| chances to fail.
| gukov wrote:
| Procrastination happens when people are not excited about
| completing a task. A deadline is a way of introducing
| excitement. Procrastination can be defined as "delaying working
| on a task until the impeding doom of the deadline grows too
| large."
| mklepaczewski wrote:
| Procrastination may happen for dozens of reasons, emotions
| are are just part of it. Many people are excited about their
| projects and goals, yet they procrastinate on them (I'm one
| of those people).
| cracrecry wrote:
| it depends on the your personality and your job.
|
| For me, personally, deadlines never worked.
|
| Probably it has something to do that I am somewhat like a rebel,
| and I oppose firmly any authoritarian order, even if it is my
| own.
|
| Maybe it is because I have always done innovative work that never
| repeats itself. We program machines so they are the ones that
| repeat the work after it is done once. So I can not do what most
| people do: They know how much time something will take as they
| have done it a million times before.
|
| Basically the best technology I use for me and my team is habits
| and knowledge about psychology(thing like anxiety and
| procrastination). Nothing beats that.
| nicbou wrote:
| I disagree. There are some tools that really help by taking
| friction out of the way. A well-tuned text editor and a few good
| bash aliases can keep you focused on your task. Good tools are
| digital mise en place [1].
|
| The problem is that these productivity tools can become tools for
| procrastination. You get to feel productive without actually
| doing anything. An out-of-control todo list or backlog becomes a
| wishlist.
|
| 1. https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/mise-en-place
| behnamoh wrote:
| I think the main problem I've faced is NOT KNOWING how much time
| to allocate for different tasks.
|
| Sure, you can learn from past experience (e.g., "last time I
| needed to write a report like this, it took me a week"). But that
| means your brain must keep a memory of events+ellapsed_time,
| which is something my lazy brain avoids at all costs.
| haolez wrote:
| "Deadlines are huge, but really what are deadlines? They're
| opportunities to fail. That's all they are. They're actually
| opportunities to learn, to fail. Hopefully not fail
| catastrophically, but it's an incredible data gathering moment."
|
| Brilliant. Will use this argument with my team. I'm not even
| joking :)
| convolvatron wrote:
| the thing that frustrates me about deadlines in many software
| organizations is that management seems intent on letting them
| slide by without comment. thus throwing away any opportunity
| think or talk about how well we are functioning as an
| organization, or even how well we are doing at setting
| schedules.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| is it same Paul Ford as in this piece?
|
| www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| I think one fundamental thing I've learnt about management is
| that different people need different things.
|
| I am like the author, a deadline helps me immensely. Yet at a
| place I worked at recently, there were very lax deadlines, that's
| because others felt too stressed by a tight deadline.
|
| A good manager can understand who needs what and can set up the
| appropriate incentives for each team member.
| nickdandakis wrote:
| This is the best take, IMO.
|
| Different strokes for different folks, but frankly managers
| don't care if a deadline greatly encourages or greatly stresses
| their ICs. Either way, it's a way to hold people accountable
| for a deliverable at a certain date, or at the very least an
| update why it was missed.
|
| Not having deadlines requires much more nuance to ensure a team
| delivers work consistently, and unfortunately nuance in work
| management doesn't report well
| plutonorm wrote:
| If you are going to do this it's best to advertise that fact
| in your job ads. You want people who like to operate in that
| atmosphere in return for something - promotion, perk or
| vision. Otherwise you just get high churn rate and poor
| productivity.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Surely the author meant _TECHNIQUE_ , not "technology"?
|
| Sticking to the actual topic, I'm not sure if it's really as good
| as the author wants to make it sound. Deadlines work great for
| some people, and for some they're just terrible, sometimes even
| counterproductive. To me artificial deadlines come off as a not
| particularly efficient tool.
| jasode wrote:
| _> But before you do, set a deadline. That's the one piece of
| "technology" that'll really help you ship. It's a wonderful
| constraint._
|
| Self-imposed deadlines as a mental hack can work for _some
| people_.
|
| For some others, it doesn't work because their brain knows it's
| an "artificial deadline" created by their own mind. It's like
| trying to tickle oneself. The self-imposed deadline just comes
| and goes.
|
| That said, there's no harm in trying it to see if you're one the
| ones it does work for.
| maroonblazer wrote:
| There's a related piece of advice that goes something like:
| "Make your goals public, this way you're accountable to others
| who've heard you make a commitment to yourself and will be
| interested to see whether you achieve it."
|
| Of course you have to pick the right people. Just tweeting it
| (at least if you're me) is the equivalent of telling no one.
| james-bcn wrote:
| Great piece. I'm also one of those people who reads lots of
| productivity books, and tries out lots of tools. But I've come to
| realise the key to productivity is fairly simple - make sure
| you're really enjoying what you do. Then you'll get up in the
| morning and want to do it. You'll be able to focus. You won't get
| distracted by Twitter or whatever. But giving yourself deadlines
| is a great way to combat perfectionism. You can be very focused,
| but if you're being too much of a perfectionist you're not being
| as productive as you could be.
| albert_e wrote:
| This sounds like good advice -- but I am also trying to figure
| out why I still procrastinate hopelessly on projects that I do
| enjoy. Is it merely that I want/enjoy the "result" (feeling of
| accomplishment) more than the "process"? Namely I have just
| become lazy?. Or is some undiagnosed ADHD tripping me up at
| every step I take. I intend to meet a therapist soon and hope
| to find out. 40s is late but better than never I guess. Grew up
| in a country where mental health doesnt get any air time in
| daily life. Still figuring out whom to approach and how.
| mklepaczewski wrote:
| Words like "intend" and "soon" are your enemies. How about
| you do it right now? At least set a deadline in your calendar
| to do it. However, chances are it won't have the desired
| effect. One great method of dealing with a task is to
| delegate it to another person. Maybe ask someone to remind
| you that you need to see a therapist?
| james-bcn wrote:
| Ha well I'm 53 and I'm still trying to get better... There is
| a guy who presents on LinkedIn learning called Dave Crenshaw.
| He has a lot of good techniques and claims he developed them
| to conquer his ADHD.
| bayofpigs wrote:
| [dead]
| jimbokun wrote:
| I think this is what drives some of the motivation for Agile-ish
| scheduling strategies.
|
| 1 week or 2 week sprint creates a deadline. Then you see if you
| planned too much or too little, and can adjust for the next
| sprint. And focuses you on just what you should be working on.
|
| Even stand ups are little mini-deadlines. You kind of want to
| feel like you have something to report the following morning,
| based on what you said you were going to work on that day.
|
| I find those things help me organize my thoughts and stay
| focused. And creates shared goals and expectations, and a little
| bit of social pressure (in a good way).
|
| I understand others don't necessarily find them helpful.
| kqr wrote:
| I think this is a common but ultimately incorrect
| interpretation of scrum, which leads to unnecessary pressure,
| stress, and corner-cutting. Standup is for coordination and
| sprints are to avoid committing too much time before
| validating.
|
| But if thinking of it as deadlines helps you, all the more
| power to you!
| Forge36 wrote:
| Deadlines always annoyed me. I suspect a large part of it is
| "what does it mean to miss a deadline?"
|
| Oxford Languages: the latest time or date by which something
| _should_ be completed.
|
| Meriam Webster: a date or time before which something must be
| done
|
| Those have vastly different implications: If something _must_ be
| done it implies "missing this has negative consequences" whereas
| if something _should_ be done: it's possible there are no
| consequences.
|
| Given that distinction: The author appears to share Oxford's
| definition. I'd rather differentiate these two definitions with
| different words "target date" vs "deadline". Missed deadlines are
| bad. Missed target require re-estimation of new target-dates.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| That aside, Microsoft TODO which I think is based off wunderlist
| IIRC is fantastic. It has the features you need to manage a
| complex todo list but not an iota more and the iOS app is snappy.
| You can store your deadlines in there.
|
| Having a todo with sub steps, deadline and planned date is great.
| maartenh wrote:
| For me, deadlines work best if more people than me have a stake
| in the thing I'm working on.
| sandbags wrote:
| Same. As Douglas Adam's said "I love deadlines. I love the
| whooshing sound they make as they go by" but if a deadline
| involves other people those consequences get me to care.
| pitched wrote:
| Deadlines are a tool to increase stress. Some people respond to
| that stress by focusing on the work so deadlines are a very
| important tool for them. For everyone though, constant and
| persistent stress in not healthy long-term. Use it carefully,
| responsibly and in moderation!
| kqr wrote:
| I agree but also I don't. Deadlines, and their close cousin
| goals, are but an excuse to stop working.
|
| You either hit the deadline well in advance, in which case you
| can sit on your hands and still consider it a victory. Or you
| miss the deadline and you have failed and might as well give up.
| Or -- the worst case -- you can tell far in advance that you will
| miss so you don't even bother.
|
| Compounding the problem is that we often aren't even in full
| control of what can make or break the deadline, so it becomes a
| lottery that, whatever the outcome, awards us with an excuse to
| stop working.
|
| It's valuable to know the cost of time, though. There ought to be
| better technologies for this than deadlines.
|
| ----
|
| I've tried to think of ways to quantify this but not arrived at
| anything useful. The best method I know is to explain to an
| expert that "I didn't ship today because the product is still
| missing X which is necessary for the customer because Y", and
| then the expert can tell you off if you're wrong.
|
| In fact, you might get far even when striking out the expert. An
| "I didn't ship today because" journal might be useful on its own.
|
| ----
|
| In contrast to other comments here, I don't think this is really
| about people needing different sorts of motivation, but more
| about excplicating the cost structure of the trade-off people
| make when they trade time (delay shipping) for... something else.
| This is a hidden cost which I believe frequently is larger than
| people think.
|
| ----
|
| And of course, time itself is an abstraction here for the
| benefits one get from shipping earlier, like faster feedback,
| less variability in release size, etc.
| bayofpigs wrote:
| [dead]
| mecsred wrote:
| I don't see it this way at all. The PM sorts tasks based on
| prerequisites and availability of resources needed to complete
| them. Deadlines are the times a task has to be done by to not
| block other tasks that have it as a prerequisite. If you
| achieve it well in advance, you note to bring it up in a
| performance review and pick a new task. If it's behind, you
| don't give up, people are waiting on you now.
| kqr wrote:
| You have a far more nuanced view of deadlines than most
| people I've spoken to. It sounds like you think of deadlines
| as a cost function where the cost of something not being done
| is zero until a particular date, then rises more and more as
| more time passes beyond that date.
|
| That's a much more useful perspective than "it doesn't matter
| if it's done and suddenly on this day it becomes super
| important" which is what a deadline implies to me. (For
| concrete examples of this binary type of deadline, think of
| releasing something at a conference, or handing in an essay
| in school.)
| mecsred wrote:
| That's a fair point, I definitely think closer to the
| second paragraph in terms of presentations etc. Different
| analysis than project work for sure.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more:
|
| > _You either hit the deadline well in advance, in which case
| you can sit on your hands and still consider it a victory._
|
| Why would you sit on your hands? You feel tremendously
| satisfied that something was easier than expected, and look
| forward to moving onto the next thing earlier than expected.
|
| > _Or you miss the deadline and you have failed and might as
| well give up._
|
| No, it's not failure at all. A thousand times no. You just
| realize you were too optimistic with your deadline, and you set
| a new one based on your new knowledge. Why would you give up?
|
| > _Or -- the worst case -- you can tell far in advance that you
| will miss so you don 't even bother._
|
| Again, just set a new deadline! Except in this case it might be
| too far out and you already discovered you were bad at
| estimating it, so break the task into a few chunks and just set
| a deadline for the first one.
|
| At the end of the day, deadlines as motivation _do_ work for
| some people, because instead of a task feeling scarily too-big
| that you don 't know when you'll ever finish it, it encourages
| you to break it down, and compare your progress each day with
| what you expected to get done, because you now have a
| measurement stick. It turns things from
| unmanageable/scary/anxious into manageable/"I can do
| this"/confident. And you can (and should) reset the deadline
| if/when you learn that the task is much larger than expected.
|
| The point isn't to meet the deadline or else you're a human
| failure, a million times no. It's just a tool to set a
| realistic goal and measure progress against something.
|
| And realistically, you'll probably only make 50-70% of your
| internal deadlines like these, and _that 's the sweet spot_. If
| you're hitting 95% of deadlines, they're too lax/easy to really
| motivate you. While if you're hitting 5% of them, they're way
| too strict/optimistic. The point is to be a healthy challenge.
|
| Also to be clear, the article (and my comments) are about
| _internal_ deadlines for motivation, not _external_ deadlines
| at work.
| kqr wrote:
| I we are arguing the meaning of the word deadline at this
| point.
|
| According to my dictionary, it's not really a deadline if you
| can just move it as soon as it seems inconvenient or out of
| reach.
|
| I think maybe Lucas Costa calls those things preemption
| points. It's a time decided in advance against which you
| check your progress and assumptions, but with no connotations
| that work _must_ be complete by that point, which is strongly
| implied calling it a deadline.
| jaggederest wrote:
| The alternative to deadlines is consistency. Do something every
| day, mark it off on the calendar, if you do it for 6 to 12
| weeks, it's a permanent habit, move on to the next habit you
| want to form.
| kqr wrote:
| Isn't that just a recurring deadline at midnight? You still
| have that binary nature, except on a smaller scale.
|
| I think you're onto something, though: in order to get an
| effect, we need to drill down to the daily, ongoing
| practises. We can't do it at a zoomed out, results-level
| view.
| PeterisP wrote:
| No, a "recurring deadline" means that on the classic
| project management tradeoff of scope-time-
| resources(+quality?) you consider that a fixed scope MUST
| be delivered by a fixed deadline, and any variation means
| that you may (have to) spend more effort or dump quality to
| achieve that; but a "recurring habit" is an approach that
| you devote a certain systematic amount of effort+quality by
| the deadline but expect some variation in how much results
| will be achieved that.
| jaggederest wrote:
| No, typically it's not at midnight, it's more situational -
| when I do X, I also do Y. For example, check the oven is
| empty before you turn it on, water the plants every time
| you refill the cat's water, do a stretch every time you
| walk to the fridge, unload the dishes while you make your
| coffee, etc.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| So is it "every day" or not? If it is "every day" how do
| you decide that you have missed a day?
| jaggederest wrote:
| If I did X, but I did not successfully do Y. Every once
| in a while missing is not a huge deal, but if you see
| consistent issues with performance it's time to try
| something else or choose a smaller habit to start with
| and work your way up. It's often at a greater frequency
| than a day, I just think it's easier to track if at the
| end of the day you make one checkmark.
| pitched wrote:
| A habit is something you've done so often that you don't
| need to think about it. Your brain can shut down into
| zombie mode and it'll still happen. This is different from
| a deadline at midnight which is about ramping up stress to
| get your brain into a hyper-aware mode, opposite of zombie
| mode!
| jaggederest wrote:
| Absolutely. The idea is to eliminate the effort entirely
| - you really want to start extremely tiny, with the
| smallest step, and build on that.
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