Mastodawn

My chronic under-estimation of how much effort things are gong to take might be my greatest strength.

In almost everything I do, if I knew how much work it was going to be, I never would have started.

@searls So true of many of us!

"All programmers are optimists" - Fred Brooks

@searls and here I am trying to get better at this. What a fool!

@janl as a lifelong consultant, I've always known that better estimating is the right prescription to the wrong solution

@searls yeah, and squaring that with you-gotta-have-a-rough-idea is very much not trivial.

@janl @searls y’all are my people. My whole life is a “how long could it take” on repeat.

@cdmwebs @searls …let’s see how far I get in 30 minutes.

Sets timer.

Timer goes.

Seven hours later: blimey.

@searls This is a concept in the social sciences! The "hiding hand principle": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiding_hand_principle

@searls we do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy. 😆