Topical Guide 618
Mark Dorset
Work, Projects, and Time: The Right Thing and the Time It Takes
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 22:
ENTHUSIASM is useful in a crew of builders, but there can be too much of a good thing. An excess of enthusiasm becomes impatience, and impatience is dangerous in any endeavor that must be done right, for work like that seems to have its own idea of how much time it deserves to take, and it can turn on you if you rush it.
Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities:
The right thing and the time it takes are connected by a mysterious force, just like a piece of sculpture and the space it fills.
See also:
Projects, Practical and Impractical TG 367, TG 569, TG 615; Ideal or Real TG 443
Work, Labor TG 5; Endless Tasks TG 86; Tasks, Sisyphean TG 89; Day Jobs; Working at Cross-Purposes TG 120; Educational Publishing TG 111; Work versus Play TG 367; Work as a Stultifying Waste of Time TG 485; Work, Persistence, Endurance, Survival, Humiliation TG 527; The Light Touch TG 617; “The Builder’s Look,” Self-Congratulation, Disappointment TG 617
Time: Discrete (Granular) or Continuous (Smooth)? TG 87
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