I don’t think this applies to everyone, but it applies to me many times over. When I feel like I can not make “progress” I get very stressed. My mind doesn’t think as well, my body feels ill. I generally have a short temper when I am in this state. Progress is my minds digestion system. It’s like being emotionally/intellectually constipated.
Some people (I have seen them, are perfectly content to just “do their job”. Progress isn’t important. It’s like walking on a treadmill. They go through the motions and go to the meetings and try not to get in any trouble. These people enjoy big companies. I saw alot of them at Intuit. In fact, they sometimes will be antagonistic to progress because it will disturb the status quo. Progress changes things.
Right now, I am having trouble feeling like I am making progress. My energy has been spread thin across many projects that slowly move forward but few “finish”. I need to finish a few things to get back on track. I wrote my presentation for AjaxExperience, but I am not convinced that it is “perfect”. So it is not “finished”. Thus, I am stressed. Add in all the other projects in the same state and I am in a bay way.
Anyway like all things, this too shall pass.
3 replies on “The UX of Making Progress”
Just like Anette Benning’s character in Running with Scissors? Please don’t divorce me and have a relationship with a neighborhood house husband.
Heya Glen — take a look at “Getting Things Done”. I’m working my way through it and finding it’s useful in reducing my stress level about my out of control task list.
I think its pretty easy to get addicted to “making progress”. After a few good days, a few bads hurt much more than everything being average. I suspect that the good/bad result will still be much better then the average.
Maybe whats lacking is time to think, as this Talk at Google puts it into much better words than I could: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHGcvj3JiGA (watched that on the plane today, slides have to much text, but overall very interesting)