Creating Workable Conditions

When running under a tight deadline, you have to make sure your estimates are accurate. If you've looked at the work and are reasonably certain about how long it will take, the next source of uncertainty is unpreparedness.

You knew how long the work would take under ideal circumstances, but when you sat down to it something came up.

You have spotty connection and needed to reference massive PDFs online, or a wiki, or an account which decided you need to redo the entire authentication process, or install a tool.

You forgot your device, or didn't bookmark your page in a reference book, or grabbed the wrong bag.

Things will happen.

But really, it's always the little things.

Even if you think you have everything you need for the work, what about the peripherals?

If you have to do something on paper, maybe you remembered a pencil but not an eraser.

If you need laptop for an extended time or heavy workload, do you have enough charge? What about a power bank or charger?

My mouse battery once died on me while I was out and about. What in the world do you do about that?

I was able to finish on trackpad, but some things are basically impossible to do quickly without a mouse. When you're down to the wire, every unexpected delay and slowdown counts.

Two basic solutions, reduce the conditions you need to do work, or make sure they're always possible. You can't forget something if you always have or don't need it.

For the mouse battery, you could...

• get a mouse which supports USB power
• carry an extra battery
• check/replace the battery before you leave
• get rechargeable batteries
• use a trackpad
• switch to a touchscreen device
• learn to do the required tasks with keyboard shortcuts (where applicable)

Any of these can work, but you have to specifically choose at least one. You can't do most of them on the fly when the clock is ticking.

Even outside of specific deadlines, the earlier you pick the better. As you keep using the same core setup, you'll discover what is missing or excessive.

I keep a little bit of card in my bag solely to pry open the mouse battery compartment because I can never get it with my fingers. That's something you have to learn from experience, you can't predict all of these little things ahead of time.

I wasn't kidding about the wrong bag thing either.

I have two identical pouches but I only need one on a daily basis. I could open them every time, but I never do in a rush. I'm not going to remember which is which when I'm stuffing things into a bag and running out the door.

This isn't circumstance, it's a predicable pattern.

That means it's solvable.

The material is difficult to label, so I tied some bright string on one of the handles. Now I only need to remember I need the "normal" one "normally", and the "special" one occasionally.

Any process you don't know how to do reliably can become a problem as well.

I had a workflow based around file synchronization which broke down when I didn't have WiFi.

If you won't have WiFi but need to upload a file from a laptop, there's many possible solutions but determining how to do them will take time.

Do you know how long it'll take you to finagle Bluetooth file transfer? I don't, but I know how long it will take to connect to hotspot or use a physical USB drive. That's plenty of backup.

None of this is hard, you just have to do it beforehand.

Give yourself the ability to work, and then use it. That's all it is.

- Rew

Nightly Notes

So, if you didn't guess from the subject, I'm writing this post under difficult circumstances of my own creation again. I have the workflow down to write and upload it down regardless, I learned from last time.

I'm happy with this post on both a writing level and a meta level.

Anyone can do something once. It's reproducibility that sets apart skill, and personally I find most of the satisfaction comes from being able to do something effortlessly.

...figures that I'm a programmer.

Anyway.

Writing feels like that today. I was under mild pressure and ran into no major hiccups. Just write and post, like any other day. It's nice.¹

I hope you find satisfaction in something today too.

- Rew