We've Started And GODDAMN IT We're Going To Finish
I doubt you’ve heard the title of this post in a professional environment, but I bet you’ve heard one of its camouflaged neighbors:
“We’re a long way down the road, let’s just get it over the finish line.”
“Let’s use another sprint to get this finished.”
“We’ve done so much work, there’s no point in stopping now.”
The best one, though, is the endless project updates where the team is “definitely going to deliver something next month!” — even though, deep down inside where we don’t want to look, is the dirty thought that they’re probably not going to have anything ready then either.
Sometimes projects take longer than expected. In fact, projects frequently take longer than expected… and sometimes we need to cut them off.
I’m guilty of this myself. The other week, I spent about four days working in Power Automate to save myself about five minutes a week. By my estimate, the time investment will be paid off about six months after I retire.
Although, I also said there’s no such thing as a five-minute task, so the only consistency you get from me is inconsistency.
You’re welcome.
My point is: it’s easy to fall into this trap. It’s an example of the sunk cost fallacy. We’ve already put so much effort in, it must be worth the effort to continue. In gambling, it’s known as throwing good money after bad.
Data teams do it all the time:
Continuing to work on the dashboard that’s full of bugs and doesn’t really meet the need
Continuing to tweak a model that isn’t quite accurate enough to be useful
Creating another summary dashboard that we KNOW won’t be used — because the data timing is awful and your stakeholder wants so many metrics they’ll have no context, all the timeframes are different, but your stakeholder knows THIS time it will save the world
Sorry. I got a bit carried away there.
But here’s the rub: sometimes the time is worthwhile. The process I spent an embarrassing number of hours automating can be copied and pasted with a few changes so other analysts can also save themselves five minutes a week. It has a practical application.
You can tell the difference by asking yourself what the future rewards are, regardless of how many hours you’ve already invested. But you have to be objective. So write it down and measure yourself on your decision-making.
No really. Write it down. And measure. We’re awfully good at believing our own bullshit.
Work with your team. Ask a colleague (or, God forbid, ChatGPT) for an honest assessment of whether your project is worthwhile.
Often it is. But also… often it’s not.
Our brains are awful at avoiding these traps. But with care and attention, we can train ourselves to avoid them.
Why write it down? Because our brains are also great at making up things we could have thought at the time, based on what we know afterwards.
That’s the hindsight bias — and probably something you’ve heard from your stakeholders (or your boss. Ugh). Maybe I’ll cover it in the future.
A Little Assignment
This week, pick a couple of your projects. Think through their business impact. Write down the date you’ll have them done, and jot a couple of sentences about why you think that’s a good tradeoff.
Set yourself a reminder to revisit it:
When you’re done with the project
Six months after you finished the project
Both times, ask yourself:
Did it take as long as you intended?
Did it deliver the value you intended?
Be honest (or don’t, I guess — I’m not there) with yourself. What can you learn?