Monday, September 24, 2007

How Much Longer?

"How much longer, Dad?"

"About 2 hours, Son."

So annoying...but I see myself doing the same thing to my own kids someday. It doesn't matter where you are, you are two hours from where you are trying to get. Two hours is long enough to be in agony (especially if you really gotta go!), but short enough to think that you might be able to make it.

Just as I began to understand under the careful tutelage of my loving father in the above example, I think everybody eventually comes to this simple realization in their life: Time is a funny thing.

Time's rate of progression seems to be directly relative to our own state of mind. We all know that it flies by when you are having fun. Conversely, it seems to drag on forever when you are bored out of your mind or stuck doing something you do not want to do. One cold, hard fact remains. Time is a finite, limited resource; and therefore subject to the laws of scarcity. That is why we can never get enough of it.

I have always been a poor judge of how long it is going to take me to accomplish a given task, and yet I never seem to learn how bad my estimates are. I like to challenge myself sometimes when I have a list of jobs to accomplish. "I will do a, b, c, & d in the next hour and twenty minutes." Usually at the end of the allotted time, I have gotten through the first half of a and thought about d, or less.

When I started painting my house well over a month ago, I estimated I could finish it in a solid week's worth of effort. Oh, how wrong I was! As of tonight, it is still a work in progress. It is "progressing", mind you, but at a snail's pace. I still have over half of the trim in all the hard places to do! I have been thinking in my mind that I will finish by the end of the week, but I have a feeling that is just another one of those self-delusions I am talking about (note: it hasn't helped that I have been sick for a couple weeks now, which I am just getting over. That has sapped my normally vigorous work ethic a bit).

We like to try and plan our lives out for the future, but invariably, our plans are way more ambitious than anything in our pasts would indicate is actually achievable. But we never seem to learn.

In college, my graduate advisor helped me understand this principle of time management. He told me to make my most wild estimates about the time it would take me to complete all the tasks I planned out for my graduate work, trying to envision all that possibly, conceivably go wrong in the process. Then take that number and double or triple it.

When it came down to it, the actual time spent was more like quadruple.

This whole discussion boils down to this simple point: Stuff takes way longer than you think it is going to.

I've learned that in my heart, but yet I can never seem to learn it in my head...

10 comments:

Rappster said...

Time time time.

Time is like a seasoning that you can't spell right.

Keep up the painting you lazy buffoon. I don't want your little sickly-boy excuses.

Let's see those brushes.
-Rapp

Danalin said...

But we have more time than money, right, Ty? So I guess in this post you are saying that we're in a world of hurt financially. :)

I think it's because you are a very thoughtful person in how you approach and accomplish things. You will never do anything so-so and that means that it's going to take a little longer. Or a lot longer. But the point is that you always get it done and you do it well. I love that about you!

Rappster said...

Hey Ty! Thanks for the visit on the 'ol Rapp blog. Sorry I was giving you a hard time about the painting. I get passionate about trimwork.

-Rapp

Mark said...

I was going to comment on your excellent and thought provoking post, but I ran out of time . . .

Nothing creates more time confusion that having a child. Little Justin has been with us only 4 months. Impossible. 4 months ago was just at the beginning of the summer . . . and yet I even signed his birth certificate, so it must be true.

Sorry, I'm out of time.

Keep the posts coming!

Tankfos said...

I found your post funny because I always get things done right when I want to.

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Goose said...

I'm with Adam. There always seems to be to much time in my life! My question is, why does time go so fast when you want it to go slow, and so slow when you want it to go fast. It doesn't make any sense. The least it could do is find one speed and stay on it.

Dad said...

Ty,
Interesting comments Ty. I have to agree with you in some ways, but let's face it, time is money and you ain't got no time so you obviously ain't got any money.

Efficiency, my son. That is the name of the game. It isn't the amount of time you have that matters, it is what you do with the time you do have. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Focus, focus, focus!!

I determined a long time ago that those mundane tasks like painting the house, (wallpapering would be another one) simply are not where I want to spend the time I do have. So, if you don't have the money to have someone do it, then it either doesn't get done or you do it yourself and probably that that well. (in my case at least)

I do know you well enough to know that when you do something, especially that you aren't that familiar with you are a detailed man who takes a lot of time examinng the problem before tackling the task. I take our shower as a case in point. It took you a very, very long time relatively speaking to finish that. If you were making a living at it you would go broke. On the other hand, it was an absolutely fantastic job....not one tile has fallen out!! I'm not kidding that it was a job that far exceeded my expectations as to what you could do and it was a great example of accomplishing much by taking more time than you might have.

Quality work at whatever the task might be is far more important than speed. Therefore, many times you will only get A and B taks done and C & D will have to come tomorrow.

I will take quality over speed any day of the week.

Dad

Elizabeth said...

I liked your post Ty. One thing to consider is that the difficult tasks you mentioned are things that you have never done before. How would you know how long a thesis would take to write until you did it? Same goes for the tiling and the painting. I imagine if you did any of those things again you could finish them more quickly. I respect the fact that you're willing to try new things no matter how long it takes. You definitely appreciate the results that way. Can't wait to see your house when it's done! Good luck!

Wendi said...

"Tiiime keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin..."

Sorry, I had a bad 70's rock moment there. ;-)

Tyler said...

I hate that song Wendi...thanks for soiling my blog with a reference to it...:-)