Bad Answer

[livingdeb]

Question: How should I do this?

Answer: It's just a rough draft.

Why that's a bad answer:

a) It's not an answer to the question I asked. Plus it's a lot easier to turn a rough draft into a final draft if I know from the beginning what is expected.

b) If you don't care how we're doing it, why even bother with a rough draft? I have other job duties I can work on that won't lead to a steaming pile of crap.

c) The fact that you're willing to make me do something once while refusing to answer my question (oh, especially the one who called it a good question), and then make me completely re-do it later after you get your head out of your butt has a negative effect on my motivation.

And yet, I have gotten this same answer twice recently, from different people.

And things have worked the other way around twice too (from two additional different people)--I described how something should be changed, and then I got told that it's not going to be changed (yet) because it's just the rough draft. If people make you quit using the old system and start using the new system, are they also allowed to call it a rough draft?

Comments

drafts

[(Anonymous)]

I find that sometimes when this happens to me (though it doesn't happen as literally as you describe) it's because the person who wants the thing actually really does not know how it should look or what it should be like. They want you to do the difficult work of making a stab at the whole thing, and then when they see it, they'll be able to tell how it does or doesn't fit what they need, and make corrections.

When I was much younger, I didn't understand this dynamic at all, and so I would always want to ask even dumb things like, "How big do you want the header?" and so on. It was a breakthrough when I learned that it's best to just do it as best you can, and give it to the boss to correct/comment on. It saves everyone time even though it creates more mental stress for the person who has to do the original draft.

I'm not sure your situation resembles any of what I'm saying at all, of course :-)

Tam

Re: drafts

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

I was a bit overly vague.

Your description reminds me of one professor I used to type for. I generally did about thirty drafts of each paper and grant proposal. He once explained that it was all so confusing to him that it was all he could do to just get something down on paper. Then once I had typed it up all nice and pretty, he was able to make it a bit better, etc.

(I never minded because he was clearly working way too hard. He published more than most people. He taught much bigger classes than most people (both graduate and undergraduate). And he sponsored more students in his lab than most people. He even helped organized a research program with another university. And he was very polite and grateful and never wanted to rush me.)

I've heard that this same kind of thing is part of why remodelling projects often end up more expensive than the original quote. As it's happening you realize other things you want that hadn't occurred to you before.

In this case, it seemed more like he hadn't thought out the process much and like he might not even care much how it came out, so long as it got done.