<story><title>Lack of progress exposed by the Canary MacGuffin</title><url>https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/10/23/idle/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>AndyNemmity</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m likely in a Canary MacGuffin situation right now. What is the reason?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been given a task I don&amp;#x27;t know how to do. So I&amp;#x27;m working diligently on learning enough about it. But because I don&amp;#x27;t know how to do it, there are an infinite number of concepts that may or may not be required to complete the task.&lt;p&gt;So, I am using the time productively in the sense of breaking apart each piece I don&amp;#x27;t understand, building it myself, learning about it, and moving on to another one.&lt;p&gt;But I haven&amp;#x27;t collected the key from the shop. Every day, I write down what I need to do again, and it changes and evolves as I learn things. I try again to complete the task, fail again, use it as an opportunity to learn about that piece.&lt;p&gt;If I had just got the key, maybe the task is complete, but I am no closer to being able to obtain a different key, or providing any value on that surface area.&lt;p&gt;So I&amp;#x27;m optimizing for my ability to get keys in the future, not getting this particular key.&lt;p&gt;Is that good? Bad? Lots of arguments in both directions I think. Maybe my optimizations are 25% what they could be with direct help. But having experienced direct help, what it actually means is someone talks over my head no matter how much I say I don&amp;#x27;t understand.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t get just how far away I am. Given the constraints, all that can be done is to improve to the point where their help, is help.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully that made some level of sense.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bigiain</author><text>So communicate that back to the person who asked you to do the task.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t mind discovering a task I&amp;#x27;ve assigned someone is actually way more complicated and time consuming that I expected (although I&amp;#x27;d appreciate an explanation so I can recalibrate my assumptions), and I don&amp;#x27;t even mind finding out a team member I&amp;#x27;ve assigned a task to is not yet skilled or experienced enough to understand the best way of doing it or to complete it in a reasonable timeframe.&lt;p&gt;What _does_ bug me (as RachelByTheBay alludes to) is the complete radio silence where I&amp;#x27;ve been kinda expecting the job to pop out of the queue completed for the last few days&amp;#x2F;weeks, only to finally after giving you the benefit of the doubt and not wanting to seem like I&amp;#x27;m micromanaging you - discover it&amp;#x27;s barely been started and doesn&amp;#x27;t look like it&amp;#x27;ll _ever_ get completed.&lt;p&gt;If it&amp;#x27;s way more complex that I assumed? Tell me. If you&amp;#x27;re way out of your depth? Tell me. If you think it&amp;#x27;s a stupid task and you&amp;#x27;re not going to do it and hope it goes away? Just fucking tell me!</text></comment>
<story><title>Lack of progress exposed by the Canary MacGuffin</title><url>https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/10/23/idle/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>AndyNemmity</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m likely in a Canary MacGuffin situation right now. What is the reason?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been given a task I don&amp;#x27;t know how to do. So I&amp;#x27;m working diligently on learning enough about it. But because I don&amp;#x27;t know how to do it, there are an infinite number of concepts that may or may not be required to complete the task.&lt;p&gt;So, I am using the time productively in the sense of breaking apart each piece I don&amp;#x27;t understand, building it myself, learning about it, and moving on to another one.&lt;p&gt;But I haven&amp;#x27;t collected the key from the shop. Every day, I write down what I need to do again, and it changes and evolves as I learn things. I try again to complete the task, fail again, use it as an opportunity to learn about that piece.&lt;p&gt;If I had just got the key, maybe the task is complete, but I am no closer to being able to obtain a different key, or providing any value on that surface area.&lt;p&gt;So I&amp;#x27;m optimizing for my ability to get keys in the future, not getting this particular key.&lt;p&gt;Is that good? Bad? Lots of arguments in both directions I think. Maybe my optimizations are 25% what they could be with direct help. But having experienced direct help, what it actually means is someone talks over my head no matter how much I say I don&amp;#x27;t understand.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t get just how far away I am. Given the constraints, all that can be done is to improve to the point where their help, is help.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully that made some level of sense.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>beatgammit</author><text>I feel like I&amp;#x27;m on the opposite end of that quite a bit. Quite often, colleagues come to me because they don&amp;#x27;t understand the task they&amp;#x27;re given, so I try to explain the pieces and how to learn about them. However, either I overwhelm them or they don&amp;#x27;t want to put in the effort, but eventually it ends up being: &amp;quot;do this, then that, and don&amp;#x27;t worry about how I knew to do that&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don&amp;#x27;t think there&amp;#x27;s a good solution to either side of this. I mostly did what you did to get where I am, and I suppose I expect others to do the same.&lt;p&gt;Usually my advice is: study this, that and the other thing, and come back to me after 40 hours of study (without my guidance, it could easily be several times that). However, the other side wants something that will take &amp;lt;1hr, and when I give them that, they complain that they didn&amp;#x27;t learn anything.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a hard balance to strike.</text></comment>