When you explain apologies to children, it often comes down to explaining to them that it doesn't matter what their internal narrative is, it matters what the other person's internal narrative is.
Yes, you didn't mean to hit Sally with a stick, and yet here we are, with one crying child, and you, protesting your innocence. You need to apologize. Even if it was an accident.
Similarly, you can avoid doing a task because you are mortgaging future you to deal with something you don't want to, or you can simply forget that it needs to get done. The motivation is different, but the outcome for the person who expected that you made a fancy dinner reservation you keep forgetting to make until after the last responsible moment is the same.
I think in part this is a big factor of tension around The Last Responsible Moment with respect to Agile and YAGNI. People know themselves or their coworkers better than the author does. The last responsible moment is quite a bit earlier than you'd think, once you factor in not only queuing theory but also illness and distraction. You're not being responsible if you haven't accounted for predictable failure modes, Parkinson's Law, and some extra buffer into the equation for Hofstadler's Law, and then some extra buffer into the equation for <checks notes> Hofstadler's Law, and some extra buffer into the equation for Hofstadler's Law...
For my money, you should tackle a task when it pisses you off. You will never be this motivated again. But I will qualify that advice by saying that one of my favorite passtimes is to invent Plan B and sometimes Plan C in my head, so at any given moment if you ask me to fix something, odds are at least 50/50 I have a coherent solution tucked away in the back of my head somewhere, instead of just throwing bullshit at the problem until it looks different, so YMMV.
Yes, you didn't mean to hit Sally with a stick, and yet here we are, with one crying child, and you, protesting your innocence. You need to apologize. Even if it was an accident.
Similarly, you can avoid doing a task because you are mortgaging future you to deal with something you don't want to, or you can simply forget that it needs to get done. The motivation is different, but the outcome for the person who expected that you made a fancy dinner reservation you keep forgetting to make until after the last responsible moment is the same.
I think in part this is a big factor of tension around The Last Responsible Moment with respect to Agile and YAGNI. People know themselves or their coworkers better than the author does. The last responsible moment is quite a bit earlier than you'd think, once you factor in not only queuing theory but also illness and distraction. You're not being responsible if you haven't accounted for predictable failure modes, Parkinson's Law, and some extra buffer into the equation for Hofstadler's Law, and then some extra buffer into the equation for <checks notes> Hofstadler's Law, and some extra buffer into the equation for Hofstadler's Law...
For my money, you should tackle a task when it pisses you off. You will never be this motivated again. But I will qualify that advice by saying that one of my favorite passtimes is to invent Plan B and sometimes Plan C in my head, so at any given moment if you ask me to fix something, odds are at least 50/50 I have a coherent solution tucked away in the back of my head somewhere, instead of just throwing bullshit at the problem until it looks different, so YMMV.