[from-nibly]

> "gun to your head, you have to finish in 24 hours, what do you do?"

PSA: if you are a project manager / owner or some other similar position you do not get to ask this. This is a personal educational excercise not a way to get stuff done faster.

[Lws803]

100% this should never be an excuse to push for a faster outcome. I have to admit though, as a personal mental exercise, this has saved me countless of hours from going down the rabbit hole of over-engineering. Some problems just need a simple solution, sometimes even without any changes to code.

[dclowd9901]

So glad someone’s here saying it. I am absolutely dreading tomorrow morning now with the thought our manager has also read this article.

[athrowaway3z]

I mistakenly read your comment as "dreading tomorrow morning now that our thought-manager has also read this article" which I must have subconsciously decided was inline with the situation.

[hn_go_brrrrr]

Sounds like you need a different manager.

[colechristensen]

"gun to your head" is maybe not appropriate for work, but the exercise is good for cutting to the core of a task when necessary. It's really the same question as what is the minimum viable product.

[zug_zug]

Yeah, I've certainly seen cases where something was overbuilt and 90% of the time was wasted.

But I've also worked at places where things were underbuilt (e.g 0 test environments whatsoever except prod). If there was a gun to my head, to finish something in 1 hour, I'd test in prod.

So I think advice that sometimes is useful, sometimes is damaging, isn't really helpful. Not unless there's an easy way to tell which situation is which.

[phildawes]

I think the exercise is more about exposing you to other solution options (to 'break your anchoring bias'). You still have to exercise judgement as to which solution is right for the situation.

[bckr]

How about “building is on fire” or “company is dead tomorrow”?

[probably_wrong]

"Here, you have a gun to your head, you have to finish in 24 hours. What do you do?"

"I set aside the slides for the pointless CEO presentation tomorrow and work exclusively on this."

"No, you can't cancel on the CEO. Let's say you have two guns to your head and 24 hours, what do you do?"

"I take lots of coffee, skip sleeping tonight, cancel the group status meeting for Wednesday and focus on these two things."

"If you do that we'll look bad in front of the whole group. Let's say you have three guns to your head..."

[haliskerbas]

at work? just shoot me then

[aidos]

> In practice, none of the day-long plans are actually a day. The gun isn't actually to your head. You can go home and sleep.

[richk449]

Anyone have a reference to this technique? I’d like to learn more.