Sunday, June 14, 2009

Infomania for Short Attention Spans

I did a 78 hour week last week. This week is probably going to be worse. I've already talked to my Project Manager for an hour this morning putting together a cutover plan, which is essentially a list of deadlines. At each deadline I'll have to stop work and tell people whether I've met the deadline. If I haven't, then I get to sit in a meeting for an hour (during which I maybe could have finished the task) and tell them who can help me and when they need to be available and why I suck so much that I couldn't meet the unrealistic deadline. Then I get to do it all over again the next time there's a deadline! And with each successive missed deadline, the ensuing meetings mean you have that much less time to accomplish the next task! Hooray!

The issue with this, as with all the project management tools we use at my company, is that it's a great idea if your project is actually well managed. But when your project manager isn't given any actual resources or options or power and isn't backed up by any higher power with a vision, each tool is just an opportunity for a bunch of managers to come milling around your project and pretending they're useful. And unfortunately, appearing to be useful is much more time consuming than actually being useful.

All of this was a prelude to the fact that my attention span for most things is mighty short these days. Ten minutes tops, really. So Current TV's website has become my favorite place to spend time. Here's my favorite clip from today. Enjoy!

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