Hofstadter’s Law says that whatever you are trying to accomplish will take longer than you expect it to. And this is true even after you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.
This fist hit me as a little crazy and then – on reflection – I instinctively knew it was true.
I mean, for a given IT project, it is almost a joke the way that the timeline sort of expands as you go.
- If the customer thinks it will take one week.
- Then the developer will estimate two weeks.
- And it will be four weeks before the changes make it to production.
Certainly, this is true for most other projects too.
I have found that it holds in blogging.
You think you are going to hit certain milestones and traffic metrics by a certain date.
And then it takes much longer than you planned for.
The fun new thing starts to look at lot like work and you suddenly wonder if you made the right choice.
All I know to combat this is what I have said before: Turn your goals into systems.
It always takes longer than expected, per Hofstadter’s Law, even when—and this is the critical part—one takes Hofstadter’s Law into account.
-Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy
