Dealing With But Befores

One of the nasty little things we tend to forget when working on or with PC's is the sheer number of But Befores lurking out there for an opportunity to completely screw up our plan for the day. Don't recognize But Befores? Sure you do:

• You come back from vacation, turn on your PC and then wait 20 minutes while Windows, your anti-virus, spyware, Adobe reader, firewall, printer, digital camera software and who knows what else get into a catfight over who gets their updates first.

• You want to update your web site, so you start researching how to. The next thing you know, you've descended into a boiling pot of CSS, XHTML, strict, loose and wiggly compliance that leads you to ordering 3 (more) web site design books and shelving the whole project for a week.
• You promise you're significant other you'll burn a CD of the Thanksgiving pictures to take to the family gathering, and a hour before you have to go, you sit down to burn that disk. Only, you haven't updated Adobe Photoshop Elements 3's catalog for six months, and as you try to do that, something goes wrong and the catalog has to repair itself, and it's time to go, now.

But Befores are like coral heads just under the water's surface, waiting to rip a nice big hole in your plans.

There's no easy way to tell if you're moving towards a But Before - that's what makes them such a pain. So the only advice I can offer is:

• Learn to recognize But Befores. If you suddenly realize there's a whole other set of tasks that need to be done before you can complete a given task, stop, assess what you have to do, and acknowledge you have an issue to deal with.
• Scope out the But Before. You may not know what you need to know, but you can at least make a rough estimate of the steps you need to take to deal with the But Before. Make that estimate.
• Is it worth it? When the time costs of a task suddenly soar, is it still worth it? Maybe yes, maybe no; but this is a question you have to ask.
• Finally, Is it Renegotiation Time? Can you still get what you've promised done by that date? If so, good for you. For the rest of us, it's time to renegotiate that deadline with our boss, or client or spouse.