Hey, this is the Daily Overpass. My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, let's talk about procrastination and Parkinson's Law.
Okay, so I am back at the office, as you can see there's nobody else here in the parking lot, but because
I have quite that I promised a client by tomorrow and it's not done yet. I had like 5 days to
do it and I haven't done it, so I have this deadline tomorrow so I have to get it done.
I forced myself to come in and do a little bit of work on it. But first I want to talk
to you, guys, about deadlines and Parkinson's Law. Deadlines for software developer is one
of the most stressful things we have. We have a certain date we have to meet, we have to
get all the bugs out of the code, we have to get everything done by a certain time.
And that causes a lot of stress. Sometimes, if we don't have a deadline, we wouldn't get
anything done. I find it - if I give a project to a developer, I never set a deadline. I
make them give me the deadline, when is it gonna done by? Developers are different. You're
gonna have a developer that takes - that does the task in one day or developers that take
the same task and does it in two weeks. You would think that quality will be lower for
the one who's spend a day doing it. You think, right? But a lot of times, quality
is the same. Some developers they would have it in their minds it will take two weeks and
another developer may think it will take one day. So this is why paying by the hour a lot
of times doesn't work. You have to think about not just the hour but how long will this take
you. I'm never impressed when somebody says I'll work for, whatever, $12 an hour. It depends
on how quickly they work. And sometimes, it just a mental thing. Some developers just
have it in their minds. So today, I want to talk about Parkinson's Law, which you may
know about already. But it's the law that says "work expands the amount of time that
you give it." So this document that I have to do, if I give myself two hours to do it,
which I'm gonna do, I'm gonna get this done in the next two hours. I will find a way to
get that document done in the next two hours. If I give myself the entire day. I will research
things, I will give myself the entire day to do it, I will spread the time out. And
the quality may or may not be better. That's the thing about it. In Parkinson's Law, I
did a little bit of research on this, it was coined by C. Northcote Parkinson, who has
the same birthday as me! So, me, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Parkinson Law guy. But this is something
you see all the time. I can remember when I was at this investment bank, I was the Senior
Developer, and they would get me the quote and everything and they would give it to other
people which was really stressful for me. Everybody hated me because of it - because
I tried to pat it out. I can remember soaking on one website component and I said, in my
mind, I thought, "They should take 5 days to do it, comfortably, it should be 5 days
to comfortably do, but I'm gonna say 10 days because it's not gonna be me doing it." So,
I said, "I think it's gonna be 10 days." "Ooh, Eric, do you really think 10 days?" The manager
said, "Do you really think 10 days? We're gonna get this guy to do it." "Yeah, let's
give him 10 days." So, they go to his other guy and I said, "Okay, I'll tell you what.
We got 10 days to do it." And he goes, "Ooh, it's a little bit ambitious, do you think?"
And I was like, "What?!" And this one of the things a lot of people who are not is software
don't realize is different developers work at different speeds. Some of them they just
get into their heads - this is a 3-month project - when somebody else might think this will
take a week or 3 weeks. And a lot of times, the key to finding feature is the deadline.
You have to put that deadline on there and I always let the developer set their own deadline.
It depends. If I'm paying by the hour which is very rare, I prefer to pay by the project.
If I'm paying by the hour, then - no, I ain't doing that, they're gonna set their own time.
And they do. But whether or not it's acceptable to me, if I didn't think it's an acceptable
amount of time. If you have - my favorite - I'm sure you have seen a lot of Ted Talks.
But my favorite ever Ted Talks is called " Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator by Tim
Urban", I think his name was. If you've never seen it, do yourself a favor and spend 20
minutes watching that video. It's very funny and it's all about procrastination. How we
all procrastinate at some levels. We all think nobody else procrastinates but we do. For
me, it's no argument. So like right now, I'm procrastinating. That's one thing I need to
get done but like I said, the videos get done regardless. So, I'm gonna make the video and
then I'm gonna go in there and start working on that document. So let me tell you, what
promise do you have with procrastination? If you never procrastinate, if you can honestly
tell me that you never procrastinate, please put it in the comments because I'll be interested
to hear that. because I have never met anybody who doesn't have a problem with procrastination.
And if you watched that video, that ted talk, I mean, one of the things, the only way to
avoid procrastination is to set a deadline. And that's why I have this deadline for tomorrow.
"Ugh!" Why did I say tomorrow? Oh, well! Anyway, that's it for today. I'll talk to you, guys, tomorrow!