For
a long time I've been puzzled by why it seems to take much longer to
do something than I first guess. I think I may now have an answer.
A
typical task has three components: preparation, action, and luck.
If we know exactly what to do, have the resources we need, and have
no bad luck, then we can accomplish a task in a minimum amount of
time. There is no preparation, and we will be 100% efficient in
completing the task. If these conditions are not met, then in the
same amount of time we will only accomplish a fraction of the task,
with some of that time taken learning, acquiring resources, and
dealing with the impact of more normal luck. In my experience, the
first attempt at doing something within an ideal timeframe (what I
call an "iteration") will result in the task being, at
best, about 70% complete. If you're familiar with the normal
probability (or "bell") curve, that's the area under the
curve that's roughly within plus-or-minus one standard deviation of
the mean.
Sometimes
we don't even know that we haven't completed the task. With writing,
for example, reading what I've written often uncovers problems with
what I wrote. When the remaining amount of the task is identified,
and if I have the opportunity to work on it, I may be able to knock
out 70% of it on the second iteration, which began with the review
that uncovered the remainder. This still leaves 9% of the original
task left undone. In many situations, the 91% that I've accomplished
may be good enough; for others, even that isn't acceptable.
On
my third iteration, I will typically spend most of my time preparing:
finding out what's left to do, and then getting what I need to do
it. Once again, with typical luck, I'll at best complete 70% of
what's left, driving the total up to more than 97%. In most
situations where someone else decides what I'm working on and how
long it should take, anything more than two iterations is a luxury
(and I often have to take the second iteration out of my hide), with
three iterations being the absolute maximum.
I
am considerably worse at bowling than at writing and editing. I
recently played five games following a 13 year hiatus. The first
game, which counts as an iteration, was better than I expected: 68.
From this starting point, which was no doubt the result of my
previous experience, my efficiency averaged less than 2% (attempting
the maximum score of 300, with values per game varying from -6.5% to
22.7%). If the model holds true and my efficiency doesn't change,
I'll need to play at least 322 additional games to consistently score
299 points.
The
amount of time involved in action (working directly on the task),
what I call "effort," is simply the reciprocal of
efficiency. My 70% best case corresponds to 1/0.7 = 1.43, or 43%
more time than if I was working at 100%, while the productive part of
my bowling amounts to more than 60 times what it would take to bowl a
perfect game.
Interestingly,
the actual time, in iterations, is closely approximated by a linear
function of effort, whose coefficients vary with how much of the task
we expect to achieve. For example, to achieve 99.7% of a task
(plus-or-minus 3 standard deviations on the bell curve), the number
of iterations is approximated by multiplying effort by 6 and
subtracting 3. A more modest goal of 95.5% (2 standard deviations)
takes 3 times effort minus 1.5 iterations. The lowest amount I've
seen professionals accept is 80% (part of the so-called
"eighty-twenty rule"), which interestingly is nearly as
close as the iteration approximation gets to a pure multiple of
effort: 1.5 times effort.
Both
my major professions, test engineering and technical writing (the
editing part), involve identifying the parts of tasks that have not
been completed by other people. Based on that experience alone, I
expect this model to apply to everyone, with efficiencies comparable
to mine. Without in-depth scientific research to back it up, I can
only propose it as an hypothesis, and explore some potential
consequences and questions that derive from it, if it is true.
Education
is an obvious area of exploration. Should education be redefined as
a means of enabling people to perform multiple iterations of the
components of tasks they will encounter elsewhere, so they can use
their innate efficiencies to achieve acceptable starting points for
those future tasks (much as my bowling games built on experience from
years ago, which built on component tasks of walking and throwing)?
Is efficiency innate, or can it be modified (and if so, is this
task-dependent)?
How
does this affect planning and execution of complex projects that have
multiple dependent and independent tasks being completed by people
with different efficiencies and access to resources? What are the
implications for waste from such projects, at scales up to and
including global civilization, especially on the survival of everyone
and everything impacted by it?
