I have a recurring nightmare that always blindsides me as it unfolds. Some sort of really exciting opportunity opens up for me, and all I need to do to get ready is run a small errand. Well, the errand slowly gets out of control, for every problem solved two more crop up, and soon enough I am scrambling frantically to get the errand done, while it becomes less and less likely that I’ll make it back in time to seize the exciting opportunity. The part that always blindsides me is this: as things are going wronger and wronger, I suddenly realize that the errand itself was totally unnecessary—but because I started on it, I have to complete it before going back.
I’ve lived out the nightmare as well, many times, but I’ve also been fortunate enough to have co-workers and bosses who were wise enough to see such problems developing and head them off. One time someone in another part of my organization came to me and said that a customer of his needed a specially modified version of a piece of software I was responsible for, and that he needed it ASAP. I took his word for it, and made plans to spend night and day getting the modifications done.
Before I did too much planning, though, I stopped in to see my supervisor to double-check that it was OK for me to do this work. He asked me, “Why would you want to do something like that?” I told him about the request, and he said “Hold on a minute.” He picked up the phone, called the customer (someone he worked with frequently) and asked if he really needed us to drop everything to get this work done. The customer said no, not at all, it would be convenient but it wasn’t really all that important. Then he called the fellow who had originally asked me to do the work, straightened him out, and I went back to the work I was being paid to do.
When we ask our kids to do something, we monitor them as closely as possible, even if it is something they are supposed to do on their own. Frequently we have to step in and ask, “Why are you doing that?”, or “Why are you doing it that way?” It doesn’t surprise us that they might choose a wrong path to the goal; often it’s an honest mistake, or because the project exceeds their ability to plan. The trouble is not the choice itself, but the fact that they never bothered to run it past us, out of pride or arrogance, before proceeding.
Too often we embark on a task whose cost in time, energy, and expense far outweighs any benefit we might gain from it. Sometimes it is because we fail to distinguish what is urgent from what is important. Sometimes it is because the more important tasks don’t interest us as much, or are beneath us, or have less glory associated with them, or don’t make us look busy enough. Sometimes it is because we don’t know how to do the task properly, but are too proud to ask for help. Sometimes it is because we wrongly assume that the task is important to someone, where a few simple questions would show otherwise.
What’s worse is that, even after we begin to suspect that the task costs more than it is worth, we continue to throw good effort after bad in order to complete it. Sometimes it really is the best choice to go ahead and finish the job—people have come to count on it being finished, or the remaining cost to complete the job is now small enough to make it worthwhile. But far more often it would be the better choice to abandon the task and write off the effort spent on it so far.
When we start to get that uneasy feeling that we’ve chosen the wrong path, we need to summon up as much humility as we can, and answer the following questions: Am I sure that someone wants this particular job done? Will completing this job actually help the overall effort? Is the cost of the job worth the result? Would things be going better if I asked for help?
