Rands In Repose: Trickle Theory

My advice is: START.

“But Rands… I’ve got three hundred tests to run and one day to…”

Stop. Go run one test. Now.

“Wait, wait, wait. Rands. Listen. They need this spec tomorrow @ 9am….”

Shush. Quiet. Go write. Just a paragraph. Now.

Welcome to Trickle Theory.

I first encountered this in the context of ripping CDs. A friend had a huge CD collection that he wanted as MP3s. He’d take 6-7 discs to work every day and rip them on his laptop while working on his desktop. The whole process took three months, but it got done, a Trickle at a time.

I’m currently working through creating a patch description in our patch tracking database. There are over a 100 defects, and each one takes about 5 minutes to process through the system. So I do 5 or 10 a day. As of today, I have 20 left.

Go read up on Trickle Theory. It works.