Why buffer overflows occur at work

Work is going to kill you if you don't enjoy spending time at the office. If your work-day is keeping you focused on "time left until the lunch-break" or "how many days there are until Friday" you're very likely not to be enjoying your job.

Why does that happen? Is the problem in you? Is it the job itself? Should you get a new one?

Let's see what the typical problems are, and get a better picture.

• Personal factors
  • Endless optimization - dissatisfaction with your own results forces you to re-do something that you did earlier in an attempt to get closer to perfection
  • Postponing something multiple times until it becomes critical. Now you feel additional pressure, and frustration increases as deadlines are getting closer
  • Unable to focus on a task
    • Wasting time in the office, then working at home to compensate
    • Distracted by colleagues ('urgent' matters, matters that don't really concern you, phonecalls, etc)
    • Lack of sleep
      
• External factors
  • Doing other people's work
    • Others don't do their assignments on time
    • They don't do things right unless monitored
  • Doing the work of employees who don't exist (since there is no one to do it, but it has to be done - someone has to)
  • Things that contradict your mentality and beliefs, forcing you to lower the quality of your output (ex: SEO vs. grammar and style)
    • Arguing with people who promote this
    • Ending up doing it against your will
  • Colleagues' lack of discipline
    • Not showing up on time
    • Leaving earlier
    • Not finishing their tasks on time, or handling them improperly
  • Inappropriate working conditions
    • Bad tea or coffee
    • No air-conditioning or heating
    • No running water, absence of user-friendly toilets
  • Social factors
    • Envious, aggressive, logically incompatible colleagues
      
      

The personal factors are the ones that depend on no one but you. The solutions in this case are simple, and can be derived from the description of the problem. All you have to do is get serious, make a list of problems that apply to you, and monitor your behaviour. In this case the solutions are:

• Lower your quality thresholds a bit. No one does it perfect the first time; there is always room for improvement, and you will get to try out new tools and techniques next time. This is pretty close to the difference between the Waterfall model and the Spiral model. When you know there will be other iterations in the future, you can afford to offer a sub-perfect version during the first phase, and improve it later.
• Do not postpone.
• Minimize the level of multi-tasking, tell your colleagues you are working on an important task and they should not disturb you unless the world is falling apart. Note: a separate study dedicated to this point will be published soon.
• Organize your sleeping habits.

External factors are outside interventions which don't depend on you. That's what makes dealing with them more difficult. There are problems such as lack of authority, the absence of clear policies - solving them is not in your competency, unless you are somewhere in the high layers of the hierarchy. Most of these problems are difficult or impossible to cope with, because they require a major effort in order to implement a solution (ex: change office, hire new people, fire all the bad people and hire new and good people, etc). Most managers will choose not to do so because that poses a serious threat to the business, or is too expensive to implement.

Even though external factors seem to be a major show-stopper, this is not the end of the world; a set of recommendations will be provided soon.

Note: this is a draft, the list of factors can (and will be) extended, feel free to suggest your own; indicating your job and pointing out what your duties are.

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