“Why even bother?”
Last month my wife and I spent an afternoon raking fall leaves in our back yard and on the side of our house.
However, we have a ton of large trees around our house and many of them still cling to their leaves. And so the next weekend, with some additional help from my dad, we raked leaves again. This time in the front yard.
The next morning, between the strong winds and rain that blew through, a heavy blanket of leaves once again coated both our front and back yard.
It looked exactly like it did before.
But we were more demoralized than before. Spending a few hours over a couple of weekends raking leaves, only to have the same amount of work present in our yard a few days later. I hopelessly look across my yard thinking “Why even bother?”
What surprised me is how much different this feels from other tasks. Throughout the summer I have to mow the grass every week. Yet I don’t feel the same disappointment or frustration when the grass gets longer.
Or other mundane tasks. Like washing dishes. Doing laundry. Or taking a shower. Every time you complete the task, it’s only a matter of days or hours before the task is waiting for you again. But, in contrast to raking leaves, I don’t bemoaningly wonder “Why even bother?”
There are two kinds of tasks. Terminal and Chronic.
We subconsciously assign every task to one of those two buckets.
Chronic tasks are serial events that we expect to perform over and over again. Mowing the lawn, doing the dishes, taking a shower. These tasks are a part of our routines and habits. The satisfaction is lower but the pain of accomplishing them is lower too.
Terminal tasks are infrequent or one-time events that we only expect to perform once. Stain the deck once every few years. Raking fall leaves once a year every November. You rest easy and enjoy a sense of satisfaction after completing what you think is a terminal task. Knowing you are done for a while. Terminal tasks have high completion satisfaction and high completion pain.
It’s frustrating when a task you thought was terminal is actually chronic. This is how it feels when leaves continue to fall after you’ve already raked the yard twice.
How you approach, budget, and plan for the work on your Data Team is highly dependent on whether you view the tasks as terminal or chronic.
...
Is data platform architecture a chronic or terminal task?
What about data modeling?
Dashboard development?
Gathering requirements from stakeholders?
...
If you view these tasks as terminal tasks then you will experience an increased level of frustration when you have to perform them again.
When you realize you need to model your data differently are you frustrated - “We already did that last year!”
Or gather more requirements from stakeholders - “That was completed last quarter”
Treating chronic tasks as terminal is short-sighted and morale-draining.
But if you realize they are chronic,
you are better equipped to last
for the long-term
Sawyer
