Monday, August 24, 2015

The Worst Projects

The worst projects are not the ones that seem insurmountable.  Not the ones that will take a herculean, all-hands-on-deck effort.  Those can actually be wonderful, they can pull a community together to make something better than can be shared.

Even when the too-big-to-succeed projects are not about community, they're still not all that bad because when they're done, you can still have a sense of accomplishment.  Like Charlie Brown used to say, it's like peeing in a dark suit, you feel better and nobody notices.

The worst projects are like peeing in a dark suit, but you don't feel better.  They're the projects that you have to stop everything you're doing to get done and all they do is reset you back to ground zero.  Three days worth of work to unscramble an egg, only to have someone say "see, there is the egg, I told you it was right there".

Effort into the hands of the unappreciative, or the ungrateful, or the jaded or the entitled.  Those are the worst projects, regardless of how much effort they take or how you feel about your effort afterwards.

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