Time

Time is often a big problem for people when they make decisions.

Mostly, if you have to choose between possible options, you should weigh the pros and cons of each, carefully, then decide.

But time obscures that.

For instance, there might be some seriously bad consequences related to one of the options, but if they take place far enough into the future, people don’t want to think about them or weigh them into their decisions. They tend to live in the moment.

Later, when trouble arises, they tend to disassociate the current trouble with most of those past decisions. It is disconnected, so they don’t learn from the experiences.

Frequency also causes problems. If something happens once, it is very different than if it is a repeating event. You can accept less-than-perfect outcomes for one-off events, but the consequences tend to add up unexpectedly for repetitive events. What looks like an irritant becomes a major issue.

Tunnel vision is the worst of the problems. People are so focused on achieving one short-term objective that they set the stage to lose heavily in the future. The first objective works out okay, but then the long-term ones fall apart.

We see this in software development all of the time. The total work is significantly underestimated which becomes apparent during coding. The reasonable options are to move the dates back or reduce the work. But more often, everything gets horrifically rushed. That resulting drop in quality sends the technical debt spiraling out of control. What is ignored or done poorly usually comes back with a vengeance and costs at least 10x more effort, sometimes way above that. Weighted against the other choices, without any consideration for the future, rushing the work does not seem that bad of an option, which is why it is so common.

Time can be difficult. People have problems dealing with it, but ignoring it does not make the problems go away, it only intensifies them.