And you are here why?

It’s a pretty nifty saying, isn’t it? Unfortunately it only works for when You don’t understand how it works, and/or You’ve got too many other things to worry about. The problem, of course, is that  if you don’t understand how it works, how do you know it’s not broken?  Murphy’s law being what it is, you know that the break will reveal itself at the single most inopportune time, right? Ok, that’s not actually fair to Murphy. Broken parts tend to fail under stress, and fail disastrously at that. And stressful situations are typically the situations in which you need the largest amount of cognitive bandwidth to deal with the ongoing chaos, and the last thing you need is something (critical!) rupturing on you. So yeah,  of course , the break will reveal itself at the worst possible time. And that is kinda the point he re - if you don’t understand the mechanism, saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” ‘cos it  seems  to work is, quite possibly, the worst possible t...

Timeframes are rarely absolutes. Oh yes, there absolutely might be  real deadlines , the kind that are actually important (“ We’re releasing in time for the Christmas season, the company depends on it… ”). That said, assuming that the deadline is actually achievable — and not something made up to get people to “work harder” — there is usually some level of uncertainty involved in the timeframes. Take the chart below for example People generally have a very good idea of how long it’ll take them to get  Short Term  stuff done. And  Long Term  stuff is usually beholden to the aforementioned deadlines, so there isn’t much uncertainty there (remember, if it’s a  real  deadline, the uncertainty is around  what  gets delivered, not  when !). The  Stuff in Between , however, can be all over the place. It’s the domain of shuffled priorities, unexpected kinks, flu season, market-induced curve balls, and  ambiguous requirements ...