Relativity of Work

When you see an object in the distance, if this object is something you see for the first time and there is nothing next to it to compare, it is impossible to judge its size. You can’t say how far you are from the object or how big the object is.

There are two unknowns. If you know one, you could figure out other. The first one is the distance between you and the object, second one is the size of the object. Let’s take size. If you know size of the object, you can compare it to the size you are observing and find the distance. The formula is as below;

observed object size = object size x focal length of eye (17 mm) / object distance from eye

Because you don’t know one, you know none. If you knew one you would know both.

A task never done before has the same problem. You can’t judge how long it will take or how hard it is. From distance you will look at the task and it will seem easy / somewhat difficult / impossible etc. Once you start to work on the task, it is as if you are walking closer to this unknown object in the distance and you start to realize how small / big of a problem it is eventually when you are at touching distance.

Not knowing what we don’t know is the root of many false projections. We can only describe what we are observing with what we had experienced before.

Moral of the story: If you are asked to give an estimate on a task which you have never done before, no matter how well you evaluate the situation, as soon as you commit to a deadline, you are rolling a dice, likely with an optimistic estimation.