Sprockets

You know this, but you’ve forgotten. Or I had.

Two things I remembered this week, while the wife is away two weeks on a business trip, leaving Dad in charge of homework and eating and activities and injuries and whatever else might come up…

I will remember this next time I pick a project manager. First do the job you ask others to do, so you know what you’re asking of them, and how to measure their effort and result. And how to help them do it.

Each kid brings home a planner now. Each different. Gotta size up the spec. What did the teacher mean here? You copied this from the board? Your friend wrote this in your planner while you were in the bathroom? The teacher didn’t write it, just said it? What does he usually mean when he says that?

Like that project to automate the settlement of derivatives at JPMorgan.

Gotta plan the evening for the worst case. What has to get done by bedtime? What could wait till morning? What could kill us Thursday night if not done same day, at the start of the week?

Your teacher could not have meant that, you say.

No, no, that’s what she meant! I’ll get in trouble!

Like writing that spec at Morgan.

Here’s a trick, you say, to make this faster for you.

Oh no! We’re never gonna be done. Can’t we just put the answer?

Like building from that spec at Morgan.

Or this, the worst.

No, Dad, this is easy, I have this trick. Watch.

Your eyes light up. That’s the spirit! That’s my girl! No one said this had to be hard.

You watch. Your heart sinks.

No, not so fast, you say. This problem is harder than it looks. No way around that.

Her trick? A trick on you. Or is she honestly tricking herself? (Honestly tricking? What’s that?)

She wants so badly to be done, can’t believe how much we have left, wants to find a magic wand, a trick, like the tricks you’ve been pushing all evening, but for once a trick that takes less time, not more.

Good job, you tell her at the end, past her bedtime, as you pack up papers and folders, getting everything in its place. Good job when you quit crying. Good job when you got off the floor and looked at me again. Good job when you found all the papers you threw behind the table.

Like when we went for drinks after twelve hours at Morgan, and watched the clock again for the last train home…

The second thing? That I knew but had forgotten?

The people.

However hard the trigonometry, however hard the long division or logarithms, however hard the DC circuit, however hard the derivative settlement, it’s nothing next to the people, and how hard the people are to figure out.

Beginning with me, figuring out and catching all the ways I don’t want to see how long and hard this job will be, done right.

Harder yet? Remembering Yes, sometimes there actually is a trick, a shortcut you’re missing, an easy way. Remembering as you cross the desert like Laurence of Arabia on his camel, thinking nothing can kill you, or stop you, or pull you off course… Looking up from the sand and remembering Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, leaping a cliff and riding a swift stream away from sure death, back to the joys of life.