There was a Tuesday
two years ago
when everything worked.
You understood the problem
by half past nine.
The design fell out of it.
The tests went green
on the first run.
By the afternoon
you had shipped
what the plan said
would take a week.
You still think about that day.
Worse, you think of it
as your speed.
Every estimate you give
is quietly priced
at Tuesday.
Every ordinary Thursday,
when the build is slow
and the problem is murky
and somebody needs you
for forty minutes,
feels like a decline
from the person you really are.
It is not a decline.
It is the job,
at the rate the job actually runs.
The best day was real.
It was also the top of a range,
reached once,
with a clean week behind it,
a problem shaped
exactly like something you knew,
and nobody asking for anything.
Treating the peak as normal
does two kinds of damage.
Outward, you promise Tuesday
and deliver Thursday,
and people learn
to add their own padding
to what you say,
which is a quieter way
of trusting you less.
Inward, you are always behind
an imaginary colleague,
the one who has that day every day,
and you read an average week
as evidence that something is wrong with you.
So find your middle.
Look at the last ten things you finished.
Not the one you are proud of.
All ten.
How long did they take,
from start to done,
including the waiting
and the interruptions
and the bit you redid?
The number in the middle of that list
is your pace.
Plan from it.
Promise from it.
Keep the best day
where it belongs,
as a rare thing
you are allowed to enjoy,
not a standard
you owe anybody,
least of all yourself.
A middle you can hit
every week
is worth more to a team
than a peak
they have to schedule around
and cannot count on.
And on the murky Thursday
you will know
you are not slipping.
You are exactly on pace.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
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