The Last 10 % = 90 % of the Task

That headline above - have you heard about that concept? It's widely known in IT project management.

You have a defined task. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. When you start you naively always believe that the project is smaller or more easily done than what is actually possible.
Some of this is due to scope-creep*. That's always an unpleasant fellow to run into. But most of it is due to the fact that you don't know what you're doing until you've done it.

But writing that down as a project goal isn't really the accepted business practice.

I'd like to think you get better at knowing you're own limits and identifying the potential areas of complexity before they hit you on the head like a freaking cement-block and delay the completion of your project. But maybe that's just wishful thinking.

I like to finish things. But a lot of things will never get finished.

It's not just IT projects that work this way. Right now I'm staring at piles of clean, neatly folded laundry. I need to put it on hangers and actually finish this measly task of doing the laundry. You'd think the hard part is over. I dragged bags of filthy clothes across town in order to wash it. I hung it up to dry. Folded it. And dragged it back across town. All I need is to finish the job. The last 10%. But I feel like it takes 90% of my energy to do it.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm lazy by nature.

By the way, this post is my attempt to motivate myself to actually put my damn clothes away. It also functions as a perfectly valid excuse to procrastinate the task - at least for a few more minutes. A win-win situation.

I've managed to have 16-hours workdays for months, juggling working a job and writing a thesis. I'll be damned if I let myself get beat by a little pile** of laundry.

So yeah. Let's all try to finish our projects, hmm? Even the small ones. They all matter in the end.

* I'm not going to explain to you what the fuck scope-creep is. Do something useful with your time and google it yourself.
** I lied. It's huge. I've been avoiding doing laundry for ages. I actually ran out of socks. Yup. I am that adamant about avoiding doing stuff.