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Comment by tdumitrescu | Hacker News Reader

"26/ Ppl are generally happier: focus + flow + roadrunner mode (only 2 speeds, 100% & 0%) + fast results = happiness for both emp & co"

Wow, I just don't know what planet this employer lives on where employees supposedly _enjoy_ sitting around idle until suddenly "holy crap tight deadline must crunch to make it!" Every once in a while, fine that stuff happens, but if a job were consistently putting me in "roadrunner mode" for every project, I'd be out of there in roadrunner mode too. Preferably before the anxiety and pressure turns into burnout.

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Tiago here.

Roadrunner mode probably sounds a lot like the "crisis mode" we're all used to in most orgs, but it's actually more like supercompensation principle in all types of learning and training. You focus w/ everything you have, and then recover. Most orgs try to balance capacity, which results in this steady state of draining yet not really productive work. Theory of Constraints (which is what this thread is based on) says you should instead balance flow.

But why not say "starting working at the correct time" and address the issue head on vs. playing psychological games?

But what is the correct time? There is a whole subfield of project mgmt dedicated to exploring the theories around this question. And the line between "psychological games" and "psychology" is very thin, some would say non-existent.

Exactly my point, figure out the correct time and optimize for that, introducing what's effectively a neurosis seems kinda of neurotic way to work :)

But there is no correct time. That's a deterministic paradigm, whereas tasks are probabilistic events, with a distribution of possible points. Take a given task, and there are versions or scenarios where it takes 1x units of time, all the way to 100x. What critical chain does is help the worker play with the 3 sides of the PM triangle, time, budget, and scope, in a way that optimizes for the global throughput, not just their little local optimum.

That makes sense. Yep.

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