When I was younger, I did some development work. I was a real hack with some of the early days of server side scripting for web servers. I got a couple of contracts to develop some middle ware to basically display data from some older systems on a ecommerce site. The projects grew, and pretty soon I found myself hiring some programmers. I learned a very valuable lesson in life very quickly. When a programmer tells you:
“I am 99% done.”
The programmer is actually telling you that he/she has not started yet. If you ever hear a programmer tell you this phrase, you better let your client know that there is going to be a delay to the project completion date. I caught myself doing the same thing in a different context today, basically told someone that I was 99% done, when I had not really even got started yet. It was a not a programming project but something else at work.
This happens quite a bit in our lives actually. We may not exaggerate that much, 0% to 99% completion but we do exaggerate our status all the time? Why do we do this? Quite simply to buy ourselves more time before a judgement occurs. We are so worried about being “judged” or evaluated in anyway, we will literally kick the can down the road by telling someone that we are almost done.
What that ends up doing is adding extra pressure and stress to get it done in a short period of time. When you have multiple of these collide at once, you get into trouble and you end up disappointing people with poor quality work. This is basically the curse of the overachieving, yet procrastinating perfectionist. The answer is to not do this and to catch yourself when you are so that you can focus on what is important and give those things the appropriate time to do the great work that you are certainly capable of.
Guy Reams
