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Image via WikipediaAs I was writing a bit of code this week to perform a fairly simple task, I found myself making it much more difficult than it had to be.
I struggled with that bit of code for two days. I had even gotten to the point of emailing a forum I belong to that often has folks that are willing to help you out of jams like the one I found myself in, but it appears the forum is down right now, so I was stuck. Without my safety net (i.e. the forum experts), I began searching the web for my solution. While I found things that danced around my situation, I couldn’t find the exact solution — why? Because I had overly complicated the problem in the first place.
After smacking myself in the forehead a couple of times and getting my little bit of code tested and into production, I was left with some time to reflect on the events that surrounded my trying to make this thing into a mountain when it was truly just a grain of a sand.
The person who had asked for the code was someone who has a lot of angst in his conversations and correspondence to me. I know he has a large area that is difficult at best to manage and his customer is our largest and therefore most important. While he can be a fun guy, if he has a problem, he palpably transmits his emotions to me. He is never in any way abusive or demanding, he just puts off signals of distress that I pick up on easily. His problem was a complex one and this tiny bit of code is going to go a good part of the distance to alleviate some of his issues.
I can’t help but wonder if the intensity of his emotion didn’t influence my reaction and subsequent approach to the issue. One part of me knew it was a simple piece of code, but another part of me seemed to want to make it the same complexity that the problem was.
Or perhaps my issue was something totally unrelated to anyone other than myself. Perhaps I don’t feel challenged enough right now in my work, so needed to make this more complex than it needed to be. Perhaps, knowing that this simple solution was going to create a large feeling of relief on the part of my managers at having this tool at their disposal to make their job easier, I needed it to be as “big” as the problem it solved in order to let myself feel really good about it.
I know I catch myself sometimes making something harder than it really is because I don’t want to do it, but that wasn’t the case this time.
Do you find yourself making life harder by turning simple tasks into difficult ones?
What do you think triggers you to do that? Is it because you want to avoid the task all together or is it out of some kind of misconstrued desire to make it more important than it really is? What things do you do to snap yourself out of the loop?
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Tags: Carnegie Mellon University, Complexity, Famous Problems, Frustration, Programming, psychology
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July 23rd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
At the college where I teach I am known as Mr. Molehill. I got given this name because I am always telling students to stop making mountains out of molehills.
As a junior programmer I learned this lesson the hard way. At the time I used to try and make everything more difficult or even more important than what they actually were. My immediate boss, at the time, kept on warning me that I was wasting time, but did I listen? At the end of that month I found that my salary was half of what I had expected. My boss kindly informed me that he was not going to pay for all the unnecessary work I had done. I have never forgotten that lesson.
I think we all do something similar at times, why I do not really know. Today I know that a big problem is normally nothing more than a lot of little problems. This is especially true of all things to do with programming. All you need to do is solve the little problems, one by one. Before you know it, you would have solved the big problem.
July 24th, 2008 at 2:28 am
I find myself just not doing it. Which I guess i kind of like making it harder than what it is, since in my mind I convince myself that I just don’t have time to do it. Bad habit of mine.
July 24th, 2008 at 7:03 am
This is so true of me. Kind of like when I was trying to transfer my blogs. I would have saved myself 4 hours if I would have given up and followed the info I found in the WP Codex.
I do this at work too, I think because I’m bored with my jobs. I do things to over-complicate things to make my job more interesting.
July 24th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Sailor — it sounds like I need you looking over my shoulder and repeating that mantra to me
Monique — I do that too - it’s usually something my husband wants me to do with his computer that I really don’t want to do (and that means it’s something like defrag his hard drive — do it yourself buddy — just click the button).
Bcarter — Ugh! We will NOT go there! Moving this blog from one host to another was a NIGHTMARE.