| The trouble is, it can have a snowball effect. Say I'm multiplexing my available hours among three things, but I get blocked sometimes. So in an effort to avoid ever having time wasted because I'm idle, I switch to having five active things instead. Now it takes longer for me to cycle around among those things. So the people who are waiting on me for code reviews have to wait longer. They also decide to switch from having three things on their plate to five things on their plate. Now I'm waiting even longer for their code reviews because it also takes them longer to cycle back around. I start thinking about switching from five things on my plate to seven things on my plate. It may not really spiral out of control this bad, but it does have a bit of a tendency to self reinforce. Sometimes it really is a good idea, but the point is there is a trade-off. In some cases, a little idle time can cost less than the problems caused by everybody juggling more stuff. In real life, things are complicated. Not everything I'm blocked on is another person. Some tasks I need to get done don't block someone else. If I submit my travel expense report a week later, I'll just get reimbursed in a different pay period, so turnaround time doesn't matter there like it does when someone else is depending on me to unblock them. |