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Very likely you think like me,
I always try to find the easiest (still good) way to do things.
I like sharing my knowledge with other people and some people think that they know everything even if they are wrong.
One of my neighbors is like that and I got to the point where I don't suggest anything to him.
This guy built a 15'x10' pergola all by himself, which is about 9' high.
After he was finished, he decided to stain the wood = Only a stubborn idiot would do it that way.
Noway I would do it that way.
First stain it and then build it.
We all know people like that. The kind who takes every task and make it way harder than it has to be, take longer, more steps. Kind of like the person who drives a screw with a hammer even though there is a perfectly good screwdriver right there.
What drives this mindset? It's not like they're paid by the hour and just dragging the job out. It's a literal refusal to learn.
I'm guilty of this. I think you are right it is at times a refusal to learn and laziness. Sometimes I guess people like myself think, it is quicker to just get the task done rather than take the time to learn how to do it faster. I think it would be better to take the time to LEARN though, so now that you have identified this attitude..problem, I may be able to make a change. Thanks,
I'm guilty of this. I think you are right it is at times a refusal to learn and laziness. Sometimes I guess people like myself think, it is quicker to just get the task done rather than take the time to learn how to do it faster. I think it would be better to take the time to LEARN though, so now that you have identified this attitude..problem, I may be able to make a change. Thanks,
That's completely valid, though. I've had to do projects before that I know that there's probably a more efficient way to address things, but at the same time, the time it would take me to learn the new process might take longer and be more frustrating than doing the slower thing that I know how to do. Having a colleague like the OP behind you telling you that you're doing things wrong isn't exactly helpful, either.
Learning is a vastly misunderstood process, many schools fail at it, and OJT at the workplace is all too often a by gosh-by-golly menagerie of variations on the "we've always done it this way" mindset. Short of highly structured training efforts, most people tend to change the training script to what makes sense to them, which usually results in a scenario wherein everyone is marching but clearly struggling to march in a uniform lockstep.
When I owned a business I insisted that new people do things my way until they understood the need to have predictable outcomes which produced a uniform level of quality. After they had been on the job awhile I noted they might change a few things but for the most part they understood the need to have a uniformly efficient approach to the work. Later in life, when working in other people's businesses I learned to do things in a way that implied a logical path to planning my work and working my plan. But others were simply winging it and hoping they could produce an acceptable level of work.
If you aren't in a authority position, very few will listen to what you have to say about their work habits, and further, it may seem to be an intrusion on someone's interpretation of work methods. At any rate I stopped worrying about the way others worked and concentrated on my tasks, the bosses always knew who was being productive and who was adding value by looking for more efficient ways to do the work..
There's a term I heard recently that I think accounts for this: "left the wheels off the trebuchet." Some mechanical engineering students built a trebuchet (a Medieval military device that flings large rocks long distances) and figured they didn't need wheels on it since they didn't want to move it around. But their trebuchet kept breaking apart. Turned out the wheels were there to absorb recoil, not just move the device around.
It's basically Chesterton's Fence.
I think some people, when they don't immediately see the need for some step, assume it isn't necessary and it's there "just because we've always done it that way." Well, maybe we've been doing it that way because it works.
All of this, plus there are people who choose not to learn because this way someone else will do the work.
Yup. They screw it up so someone else will do it thereafter. I’ve seen this at work a bunch and also right at home. It’s a destructive way of avoiding work because materials gets ruined and have to be fixed or bought again.
I agree that sometimes it is also mental laziness. I see more and more of this in someone as he gets older, as if it is painful or too much work to break ingrained habits.
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