Pessimism is often seen as the negative in many situations, however, is too much optimism just as bad?
In a uncharacteristic departure from my usual blogs on technical problems, and possible solutions, I'd like to offer some food for thought on the social factors that effect projects, timelines and expectations.
As someone who tries wherever possible to be optimistic about whether or not I can deliver outcomes to the customer, I sometimes wonder whether or not being too optimistic is detrimental.
For example if I say that I'll get something done for a specific date (the optimist in me) but it turns out that it's a larger body of work than I originally thought, I'd rather go above and beyond in order to meet the date than let people down. Now, I'm not saying that doing extra to meet deadlines is incorrect, far from it, but if it's happening constantly it may mean I am not learning from this experience. Am I masking an underlying problem that I didn't understand the work to be done? Or that I am poor at estimating the time it needs to complete a body of work? Is optimism in these cases taking precedence of realism?
Enter pessimism. Should I be more pessimistic about what can be done in order that peoples expectations are met without me having to constantly do extra to get it done? Or will this lead to bad relations with the people that you are working with?
Like everything it's the balance that counts. Without a healthy dose of pessimism I think that our promises to get work done will end up in letting people down or burn out in trying to make up for poor estimation. In contrast without optimism we would not be able to have drive to reach beyond our current situation and make things better than the status quo.
Therefore, I think the balance in the two end up being realism - the ability to deliver the things that you say you'll deliver in a time frame, that's achievable in your working day. I'd be really interested in what others think on this topic, whether this rambling is right or wrong.
Let's cover pragmatism another day...
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