Was ruminating on all things durational for the last few days, likely as a result of the evening’s drawing in (and, on that note, why do we say it’s ‘drawn’? Im not pulling to push short the day’s light. Longer days suit me) as much as anything. 

And it’s an introspective time of the year, especially as the countdown to invoice versus budget reconciliation looms large. Think what you could have billed, if only, if only…

Which brings me back from the meander (as all things monetary tend too) and a random Proustian moment triggered by the need to turn a piece of a project around super-quick. 

The metaphorical madeleine took me right back to desktops before they were screens, and how the latency between ask and answer seems to have stood as kind of Creative Constant. A law, if you will  (physically? Chemically?) transcribed by a rule that the less worthwhile the actual need is, the more urgent the perceived demand will be. 

As long as I’ve known it, there’s always been the ‘need it by COB’. And whatever the tools available were at the time, it always was. And it was always (pretty much) the least important thing on the project. The bit that will likely as not got dropped like a hot coal the next week. 

Now, I need to be careful here. 

As the sharp end of the chisel (rather than than hammer), who am I to question what might be being asked of the stone?

But there does seem to be an unbroken pattern. 

Good stuff takes a bit more time. 

Rushing? A sure-fire bodge.

And things (in Design World) needed Right Now are - and never were -  going to make the difference. They simply get in the way of the important stuff (however large. Or small.)