
What is your excuse for not doing all you can? - BorisBomega
http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/03/10/what-is-your-excuse-for-not-doing-all-you-can/
======
ekidd
_If the work would have mattered to you, you would have found a solution._

This is an easy thing to say, and perhaps for many people in many
circumstances, it's true enough.

But I have no doubts about my work ethic—I've spent 50+ hours per week _in the
zone_ at a startup, until I hit my physical limits—and I can estimate project
scope reliably enough to offer my consulting clients fixed bids.

But even so, I do occasionally have to e-mail a client and tell them that
something will be delayed by a few days, or even a week. It's not that the
work isn't important, but rather that when I push hard enough, there's no
padding left, and a few days of illness (or caring for a sick kid) come
directly out of work time. Similarly, sometimes there's a hard technical issue
that nobody expected, and it takes some time to engineer around.

So for people already working near the top of their game, this manager's
notebook and attitude comes over as so much motivational B.S. Professionals
work hard. But if 90% of challenging projects come in on time, and the other
10% slip by a few days or a week, that's not necessarily evidence of moral
failure.

~~~
ZoFreX
In situations like that, the real reason is often deeper than the "excuse".
I'm a big fan of "five why's' [1] for root cause analysis. I think finding the
root cause is far more important than differentiating between reasons and
excuses, or belittling people because you think their reasons aren't good
enough.

Example: "Laptop ran out of battery" - is that really a bad excuse? What if
there aren't enough charging points in the office, so not everyone can keep
their laptops topped up all at the same time? Analysing the surface reason
alone is not enough to know whether it has merit, there may be a valid root
cause for what appears to be a poor excuse.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys>

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nopassrecover
There is a difference between a reason and an excuse. An excuse is an attempt
to remove blame ("it's not my fault, the traffic was bad") whereas a reason is
an explanation of the cause ("the traffic was bad"). The latter, isn't an
attempt to remove blame, but to a) identify risk factors that can potentially
be mitigated in future and b) to remove misunderstandings ("I bet he was late
because he didn't care" or as in the article "If the work would have mattered
to you, you would have found a solution.") by explaining the true factors that
caused the issue.

Assuming people are maliciously trying to ruin your day, and flat out don't
care, is a sign of poor thinking patterns and a precursor for mental illness.

~~~
bad_user

       The latter, isn't an attempt to remove blame
    

I actually have a different view.

Excuse: "I'm sorry, but the traffic was bad".

Reason: "The traffic was bad << now fuck off >>"

    
    
        If the work would have mattered to you, 
        you would have found a solution
    

Over the years after getting my brain fucked for pennies and consistently
treated as a resource that shouldn't question the powers that be, I get pretty
cynical when I hear such words.

------
edw519
Cute story, but shitty management.

So you go to your boss with (a) unfinished work and (b) some accompanying
data. He searches his manual database, looking for a match of your data, then
"classifies" it as an excuse, not a reason. (After reading the entire post, I
_still_ don't know the difference.) He's so busy belittling you that he spends
no time:

    
    
      a. trying to understand your data
      b. trying to separate causes and effects
      c. getting down to the root cause
      d. identifying systemic problems the enabled the cause
      e. fixing the current problem
      f. implementing systemic changes to prevent further instances
      

Here's my take:

My excuse is that the job will not get done.

The reason is that I got fired after shoving my boss's little book up his ass.

------
scrrr
I understand school-kids have excuses, but if you're late you're late. It
doesn't matter why. The small book of excuses is laughable. I'd rather not
work for a guy like him.

~~~
AlexC04
To be fair, I think he's a fake guy. Look at the start of the "article" it has
all the weasel words that you'd expect to see in a dodgy email forward. "I
once heard a story of a an unnamed manager at an unnamed company who..."

Go to Snopes and you can find a hundred emails that start like that.

What's there's a word for this type of story, that I can't recall at the
moment. Straw-man set up to illustrate the moral of the tale. Truth is with
only so many hours in a day, and burn out is just a much a risk as anything
else, work-life balance is sometimes required.

The article might be interesting and eye opening if you're a teenager, when I
was a high school teacher, the constant use of low value excuses was worth
drawing attention to. In fact occasionally delighting a high-school teacher
with a new excuse sounds appropriate and realistic. A manager at a big-company
though? Fuck that, adults _do_ sometimes have real excuses - their kid was
sick, the roof on their house was leaking, whatever. Could you imagine some
dude checking off "ahh sick child #123, delightful" when you told him your kid
was sick? You'd punch that miserable fucker in the nuts.

I call bullshit.

~~~
BorisBomega
I left those details out because I didn't think they would add to the story.
The big company was KPN to which I sold my WiFi Hotspot operator in 2003. The
manager who told me the story was Jan Kroon and it was about a manager he
reported to. See, all that info doesn't make the story that more interesting
really.

~~~
dhimes
Actually, it's those details that _do_ make the story interesting. Some little
details that make the characters seem real are essential to hold your
audience. (At least, so says my wife, who is a writer.)

------
eleitl
> If the work would have mattered to you, you would have found a solution.

Sorry, but my life matters to me a great deal more than work. Sorry, work. No
harsh feelings, I hope.

------
BonoboBoner
The older I get, the more I learn that in many cases in the past, 'having done
everything I could' did not make a difference to 'doing the 80% solution' in
the end.

Doing everything you can is a perception within you, your imagination of an
ideal solution. This does not mean that this is always necessary to achieve a
certain goal. There is always more to do, better things to achieve no matter
how close to perfect you get.

------
jhonnycano
The reason i'm not working right now is because i'm reading on Hacker News

------
nopassrecover
An unwillingness to accept and identify the causes of problems instead of
dismissing all causes as facades for laziness indicates poor project
management ability. A good project manager works with the team to identify why
goals weren't met and to include these new risks in future estimates. If he
spent half as much time identifying and mitigating risks as writing up his
book of excuses he might not have had so many people giving them to him.

------
thaumaturgy
My _excuse_ is that you either whittled down the amount of time available to
get the job done, or didn't pay enough to make the job the sole focus of my
life for the time required to get it done, so something else came along and
took priority instead. You are not the most important thing in my life.

There, now you've been a dick, and I've been a dick. Is this better?

------
jordan0day
I was really hoping for something inspiring, something that would make me
realize I wasn't being the best human being I could possibly be and would give
me insight towards how I could achieve that. Instead I got a crummy made-up
story that only contained platitudes and unrealistic expectations: _If the
work would have mattered to you, you would have found a solution._

Your work and other elements of your life can both matter to you. It's not an
either-or situation. "Don't worry about my dog being hit by a car and bleeding
out on the street, I got those BI reports done on time, boss! We can
fromogulate an additional 3 widgets per year! Can I leave early and go bury my
dog?"

I wonder what the author's _excuse_ for this drivel is?

------
gadders
_If the work would have mattered to you, you would have found a solution._

Clearly the manager in the article is infallible, and has never had an issue
that has caused late/non-delivery.

Excuse 201: My manager p-ed me off so much with his stupid Book of Excuses
mind games that I spent all my spare time look for a job elsewhere.

------
6ren
_It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that
defines us._

------
known
Could be due to lack of _social mobility_ <http://goo.gl/K8Pg>

------
berntb
I can only speak for myself.

In the general case, I am a bit scared of being burned out again. So I make a
point of relaxing, eating dinners with people and taking care of myself. This
is fading.

In the particular case, I just moved to work in a cool new place (Cluj,
Transylvania). I do work hard, but there is just too much fascinating stuff!

