Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The old saying about not having time to do it once still holds. Perhaps we will learn one day.

There is an old saying about not having the time to do something right, but always having the time to do it over and over and over and… I’m not sure who said that first. Perhaps someone in the BC era.

It is unfortunate, but this old saying is still common practice. Something must be completed by tomorrow, so let’s just do this. Perhaps the next person in line will accept what we hurriedly did and life will move on. Perhaps they will “kick it back” and we have to do it over. Doing it over means it will be completed a week from tomorrow. Wait, I thought it “had to be done tomorrow.”

Gosh. What are we doing? Something had to be done tomorrow, but then a week from tomorrow was okay. We knew we were doing a poor job. No one will notice poor quality, right? If no one notices poor quality, what are we doing? And why were we only given one day to do something that is important to someone? Questions and questions.

Yes. What are we doing? Does this thing really need to be done at all? Perhaps we could stop, call someone, and ask. Let’s be candid. Tomorrow’s product will be lousy. Do we have the time to do well? If tomorrow’s product is lousy, will we be given more time? Perhaps we could just have two days to do it well instead of a week to do it poorly and then do it well?

We can do better than this. Let’s all give it a try.