[hi_hello]

So much. Open-ended or poorly defined projects can really spiral into attentive dysphoria for me. Productive procrastination – room cleaning and the like – is particularly appealing in that state, just to feel like I'm making progress on something.

[xyzzy_plugh]

The best manager I ever had set it up like so, he'd go:

Here's a large, open-ended problem I want you to solve this quarter. I'll secretly wait while you fix a thousand other unrelated problems that make our business better despite making no visible progress on the open-ended problem. Then I'll reframe your work to show management that the thousand other things you improved are more valuable than the open-ended problem, and get you promoted.

I miss that guy.