tasks | writing notes

Are you an over or under committer? I really did not need to read Matt Swanson’s Engineering – Over/Under: I’m a Serial Over Committer to know that I am an over committer.

My co-workers have recognized – but not taken advantage of – the fact that I have a NO handicap. Put basically this is an inability to say NO when people start talking about their projects, ideas or desire to hear me lecture. So I have always been like this and no matter how much extra work it places on me – I keep agreeing to more stuff.

In part this is out of flattery: You really want ME to talk, be a part of a project, write an article… But it’s also out of pure enthusiasm. When someone talks about an idea they have I immediately get into gear and starting thinking and sharing my thoughts. I quite regularly talk myself into volunteering work without even realizing it myself. I am that stupid. The problem is that the are too many projects. Some of them end up as dead ends – or even worse – as corpses along the road of my ever present guilty conscience.

There was more than a pang of recognition & amusement in the line Matt wrote:

“But you never finish anything!” is a meme that co-workers jokingly needle me with.

But fundamentally I disagree with it. The problem is not that things don’t get finished – its more that the ratio of finished/unfinished is extremely unbalanced. Of course there are 100s of projects I have never finished. If you ask my guilty conscience there are millions – I am basically an unfinished project that will never be completed.

The trick is, for me, to look at the problem in a different light. It’s not about what I do not finish but about looking about the number, impact and success of the projects I do finish. When I look at these I can smile and think: Not too shabby. At least until the phone rings and someone asks if I could…

Points of reference are important but we tend to forget how much we rely on them. Speed only feels relevant to other objects (stationary or in motion). The completion of major tasks, overcoming obstacles, passing exams, finishing thesis etc are only important if they can be seen in relation to other forms of motion.

Captain Joseph Kittinger as part of research into high altitude bailout made three parachute jumps from a helium balloon. While he was falling at speeds of over 200 meters per second he did not have a sensation of falling. He was so high up that he had no points of reference.

The first, from 76,400 feet (23,287 m)
The second from 74,700 feet (22,769 m)
The final jump was from 102,800 feet (31,300 m)

During the final jump he fell for 4 minutes and 36 seconds reaching a maximum speed of 614 mph (988 km/h or 274 m/s). He opened his parachute at 18,000 feet (5,500 m). He set records for highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest drogue-fall (4 min), and fastest speed by a human through the atmosphere. (wikipedia)

Somehow this makes me happier…