Why is this taking so long?
Jul. 27th, 2005 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI'm trying to finalize a document at work and it's taking forever. If I looked on the outside the way I feel on the inside, I would be slouched in my chair with my head lolled to one side, eyes glazed, and tongue sticking out, making low moaning noises. Many people find this sort of behavior to be unprofessional and thus potentially salary-lowering, so I try to make do with the occasional eye-glazing in the direction of my monitor.
I finally figured out why it's not my fault that I'm having so much trouble:
1) One of our subsystems was recently re-written, so I have to make sure I catch all the references to it and make them true again.
2) Our system is horribly complicated, confusing, and boring (bureaucratic), because that's the only way to make it work with our very creative data, so I want to make the instructions as clear and simple as possible.
3) This document is already fifty pages long, and I'm not done yet, so I'm trying to re-organize so that everything is said exactly once.
4) But these are directions on how to update our system using mostly a report of mostly unrelated data from another system. So I need to make it easy to sift through the fifty pages to find all the relevant sections for each imaginable kind of change. (And people get very creative about the kinds of changes they demand.)
5) I want lots of examples, but examples in our system are like needles in haystacks.
6) I need to learn all the stuff about this system that I still haven't learned after four and a half years; things I haven't been able to learn because no one will answer my questions because they are so complicated because people are so creative. (Okay, this is partly my fault. I need to get better at begging. Ahem, assertively demanding my righ--whatever.)
The one good thing is that I think I can actually do it, and I think I'm working on the most complicated section right now. So once I get through this, the rest will be easy. And then I will have the most amazing complete document. Which will not only explain how to do my job to the next me (when I leave) and to my supervisor, but will also demonstrate to the other sections why we need to work together on certain issues. Most other sections think of my section as the inscrutable one; no one even really understands what we do, let alone how we do it. Nor do they particularly want to. But when I'm done, my boss is distributing this thing (and another one I already finished) to his co-bigwigs, and then they will finally see why we think innumerable boring issues are so vital. Or maybe they will just have fifty pages of oh-I-still-don't-know-what-you-guys-do. Oh, well.
Journal entry of the day: Bottakuri: The surprising wit and cunning of the Japanese tourist by John of maison de stuff. "It seems, however, this view of the oblivious Japanese tourist with more money than sense is becoming increasingly far from the truth, as they have in recent years launched on something of a counter attack on these con artists, one which I find deeply satisfying."
I finally figured out why it's not my fault that I'm having so much trouble:
1) One of our subsystems was recently re-written, so I have to make sure I catch all the references to it and make them true again.
2) Our system is horribly complicated, confusing, and boring (bureaucratic), because that's the only way to make it work with our very creative data, so I want to make the instructions as clear and simple as possible.
3) This document is already fifty pages long, and I'm not done yet, so I'm trying to re-organize so that everything is said exactly once.
4) But these are directions on how to update our system using mostly a report of mostly unrelated data from another system. So I need to make it easy to sift through the fifty pages to find all the relevant sections for each imaginable kind of change. (And people get very creative about the kinds of changes they demand.)
5) I want lots of examples, but examples in our system are like needles in haystacks.
6) I need to learn all the stuff about this system that I still haven't learned after four and a half years; things I haven't been able to learn because no one will answer my questions because they are so complicated because people are so creative. (Okay, this is partly my fault. I need to get better at begging. Ahem, assertively demanding my righ--whatever.)
The one good thing is that I think I can actually do it, and I think I'm working on the most complicated section right now. So once I get through this, the rest will be easy. And then I will have the most amazing complete document. Which will not only explain how to do my job to the next me (when I leave) and to my supervisor, but will also demonstrate to the other sections why we need to work together on certain issues. Most other sections think of my section as the inscrutable one; no one even really understands what we do, let alone how we do it. Nor do they particularly want to. But when I'm done, my boss is distributing this thing (and another one I already finished) to his co-bigwigs, and then they will finally see why we think innumerable boring issues are so vital. Or maybe they will just have fifty pages of oh-I-still-don't-know-what-you-guys-do. Oh, well.
Journal entry of the day: Bottakuri: The surprising wit and cunning of the Japanese tourist by John of maison de stuff. "It seems, however, this view of the oblivious Japanese tourist with more money than sense is becoming increasingly far from the truth, as they have in recent years launched on something of a counter attack on these con artists, one which I find deeply satisfying."