You sent the question at two.
Which of the two formats
does the partner actually send?
Without the answer
you cannot finish the parser,
so you start something else.
Then you check the chat.
Nothing.
Back to the something else.
Check again.
Still nothing.
By four you have checked
twenty times,
finished neither thing,
and the answer arrives
at ten past five,
saying the first one,
which is what you guessed at two.
The waiting did not cost you
the parser.
It cost you everything else,
because you were never fully
anywhere else.
Part of you stayed by the door
listening for the knock.
An open question
behaves like an open tab
you cannot close.
It is the most interesting thing
in your head,
because it is the thing
in the way,
and every check
puts it back at the front.
You are not working on the parser
and you are not working
on the other task.
You are waiting,
in small expensive pieces.
So before you send the question,
decide what you will do
if nobody answers.
Usually you already know.
Write it down
as an assumption.
I am assuming the first format.
If that is wrong,
these two functions change.
Then carry on with the parser
on that assumption,
in a way that is cheap to undo.
Most of the time
the answer confirms the guess
and you lost nothing.
When it does not,
you have a short, named list
of what to change,
not an afternoon of nothing.
If you truly cannot guess,
then switch properly.
Close the chat.
Pick the other task.
Choose one time
to look for the answer,
four o'clock,
and do not look before then.
And put the deadline
in the question itself.
If I hear nothing by four,
I will go with the first format.
People answer faster
when they can see
what silence will decide.
A question in flight
is not a reason to stop.
Write down your guess,
pick a time,
and stop listening at the door.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
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