Architorture
By kilax, December 17, 2007 4:57 am
The truthful reason I couldn’t sleep Saturday night is not because I was so excited about seeing the Star Wars exhibit (although it was a lot of fun!), but because I am so, so stressed out about the amount of work I have to do.
I avoided the “thinking about work at home” thing for a long time. On purpose. I still wanted to enjoy my life when I got home, no matter how late that be.
But I woke up at 4:00 am on Sunday morning because I was stressed out about completing a cost estimate before the end of the week. So I got up and worked on it for a couple of hours before going back to bed.
I hope this doesn’t become habitual.
Themocracy
OMG, that’s crazy! Admittedly, I pulled a relatively-long (about 70 hours) week last week, but I’m hoping/expecting that to be an aberration for a couple major reasons I won’t delve into here…
Some things I would ask yourself if you haven’t already, all based around the 3 factors of any project (quality/features, time-to-delivery, and monetary cost):
* What is the business need for this cost estimate’s deadline?
* What are the likely consequences to the business if the cost estimate took a few percentage points more time to complete (5-10% longer, say, which might translate into an extra day or two, if I’ve followed your blog well enough)?
* What are the consequences to yourself if the cost estimate took a little extra time?
* Is this cost estimate too thorough, i.e. are you striving for perfection when “good enough” will do (as is often the case in business, I’m coming to find)?
* Is management open to letting the deadline slip a bit? (Often, deadlines are B.S. dates pulled out of a manager’s nether-region, and not based on any calculatio on their part or business need in general.)
I could probably list more, but my train’s pulling into Ogilvie station now… :-/
Your turn to the dark side has begun. You have controlled your fear of working on the weekends, now release your anger. You underestimate the power of the dark side, if you will not work on the weekends, then you will meet your destiny. Soon you’ll be working 46 straight days. Excellent.
In my world, if I’m thinking about work on the weekend the client is going to be billed for that some way or another. :op Don’t stress too much!!
ah… the joys of being in the workforce!!! 🙂 i completely understand… i have been stressing this week since i realized vacation was so close!!! i love being on vacation but i dread the week (and sometimes two) before it… it’ll be a long week down here too!!! that’s ok though, Christmas is almost here (then New Years) and then we’ll have some time off!!!
🙂
So you can’t mention the Star Wars exhibit a few times and then not give more details!!!!
It looked like it was going to be cool; they had some stuff up to preview it (advertise it) the last time I went to the museum (that was probably the weekend we met).
I’ve been that way a lot recently. I think it means we’re due for a vacation! 🙂
E – you crack me up 😉 I think you need some sleep 🙂 Just kidding! It is actually something that I need to get done and get done on time so we can make a profit. We have a predetermined cost contract with this client 🙁
Andrew – I’ll never turn to the dark side of the force!
Gina (Mannyed) – yeah, they get billed, but I don’t get any GD overtime 🙁
CourtneyInControl – that’s it – the arriving vacation. I want to get as much done as I can before I am gone for three working days. (Granted two of those days are Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but still!)
Gary LaPointe – It was cool. I really like all the models of the ships. The Millineum Falcon was probably the coolest one. I wish they would have had more information on the models; such as the scale they were at, and what materials they were made of. The rest of the exhibit was all these lame “science and technology” tie-ins that had nothing to do with Star Wars. I wish it would have been ALL Star Wars 😉
Kyra – it’s coming soon! Only 4 more work days! Horrah!