That shouldn’t take long, right?
When you work with people who don’t understand what you do, it’s not, uh, efficient or effective.
I had to laugh at/with the designer I was working with when he suggested (not really asking) that a task wasn’t going to take too long. Of course, and he admitted, that he had no idea if it would take a long time, but it was almost as if it were just a precursor to what he was going to say next in hopes that it wouldn’t be too difficult.
If you don’t know how to do a thing, then you probably aren’t a good judge about the process to get it done.
Maybe the task is simple, maybe it’s not. It doesn’t really matter. But you need a little perspective as to their point of view. If it’s a very complex task, you need to be ready for that–just as you’re also ready if the task is simple. You work together, you learn more what’s simple and what’s not. After a while, you don’t have to begin more conversations about an upcoming task with, “So, this shouldn’t take too long, but what if we … ”
If it looks really easy, is it?
