Anecdote: It only goes so far. There are quite a lot of people who will be quite pissed off with you (passively) if you're unreliable. I mean, friends will tolerate it, but let me tell you, as someone who's quite "reliable" (punctual, do what I promise, etc.) it's quite stressful to have to rely on someone who isn't. So stressful, in fact, that I wouldn't actually interact very much with this particular person I'm thinking of right now if I wasn't forced to (via circumstances beyond my control).
> [Snip Feynman] anecdote.
Feynman could get away with a lot of shit that almost nobody else would have done because he was a genius (and was recognized as such by his contemporaries).
Are you at "Feynman"-level?
> 90% of the time, being "reliable" goes against my best interests in terms of career and goals.
^ I don't see what the above...
> My value is that I can hunker down and make stuff. My value is not "tasks".
There's a difference in actually being unreliable (which I'm sure Feynman wasn't) vs projecting the negative of "I will help everyone every time".
It boils down to finding enough courage to focus on your priorities in life and not feeling guilty about it. Respect yourself (your time) and people will respect you.
I think we might be talking about two different kinds of unreliable.
When you hire me to do a job, or I agree to build something for you, or something along those lines. When that happens, I will stop at nothing until it's done. I might be off in my estimate of how long it takes, and I might come back to you and suggest a revised plan if I think new information significantly changes the scope/cost of the project. But in the end, it will be done.
You can rely on me to take things to completion.
But you'd be a fool to rely on me to answer your email within 1 hour, or a day, sometimes at all. You wouldn't want to rely on me to pick up the phone when you call. And you definitely don't want to rely on me to make it to drinks or dinner exactly on time. Unless there's a very hard external deadline (like theatre tickets), I'm probably going to be a few minutes late.
And you wouldn't want to rely on me to, say, buy your airplane tickets. Or random little things like that. I'll get around to doing "Random low priority task" at some point maybe. Don't rely on me for those.
The whole point of this unreliableness is so that you won't even ask. If I say I'm gonna do it, I'll do it, probably riiiight before the external deadline. But I'd prefer you don't even ask. And you'll be much less stressed about it if you don't.
Hell, I hire a VA for stuff like that because even I don't want to rely on myself to do such things.
The lateness, that's a bad habit. It comes from losing track of time when I go into deep work mode. It happens a lot and very easily.
The dropping of small things I consider low priority and/or irrelevant. Well that's just prioritization, if I'm working on something I think is important and there's no time left over for your email or message or phone call or random little task. Tough. I have a laundry list of my own little tasks that I also didn't get to.
> Are you at "Feynman"-level?
Probably not, but the US government does say I am an alien with exceptional ability in the arts or the sciences so there's that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I definitely agree that there's a difference between "generally unreliable" and "unreliable until committed". Coincidentally the person from my anecdote is also "your type", but unfortunately it's really hard to tell from the outset if he's committed or not, so...
As long as people are very clear about when they're committed, I have absolutely no problem with "unreliable" people :).
> unfortunately it's really hard to tell from the outset if he's committed or not, so...
I think that stems from an "avoiding confrontation" place. I grew up with a mother that would take it very very poorly if I said "No" for things, so I got used to saying "yeah sure uh-huh" without even hearing what I'm agreeing to.
Sometimes I still do that. It's mostly frustrating for my girlfriend tho, doesn't happen in other contexts. She'll get upset about why I didn't do something I said I would and I won't even remember what she's talking about.
Potentially something similar exists for your friend person. There's a spectrum between "uh-huh" and "Yes, this is amazing, I'm starting right now"
Let me preface this with: I'm quite drunk, and this is probably a lot more ranty than I intended. I have read it through a couple of times and I think it holds up even when sober, but I'll let you be the judge of that. I don't think I'm being dishonest or frivolous.
As you say -- as far as I can tell -- it's probably "just" about honest communication... or maybe you're just irresponsible! (That was a joke!)
Just out of curiosity when+why didn't you "do something I said I would"? Of course you mention that you don't remember her saying it, but that just leaves the question of... why don't you remember it? I'm not trying to be an asshole, I'm really curious about this dynamic.
My "troublesome" friend person is probably very similar to you -- not having access to your or his internal monologue, I can't be sure -- but honestly, I think maybe he's just prioritizing badly, if you know what I mean? Maybe he lacks empathy to see how much distress his procrastination sometimes causes?
I should also add that "we" have obligations to third-parties[3] which means that his procrastination sometimes means that "we" + "others"[2] have to do 24h+ shifts just because he didn't prepare/do-it-in-time. Just out of curiosity, is this this something you would do (intentionally or not)?
(I won't lie, that shit is stressful. Even if you want and are willing to get it done on time this "$X isn't quite ready" thing is extremely stressful until "you" get it done.)
[1] Because Psychoanalysis is mostly bullshit.
[2] External accountants and that sort of thing. It's absurd how far this procrastination (about fully known calendar dates) is.
[3] Think drug cartels... or the Tax Man. Take your pick! :)
> Just out of curiosity, is this this something you would do (intentionally or not)?
To be honest, it's probably happened before. When it involves other people, I make sure it doesn't. When it's just me and I am willing to bear the risk, yeah, bureaucracy def gets done late.
As for brushing people off with "yeah sure". That happens when you bug me while I'm deep in thought on something. Like I'm in the middle of writing an article or I'm coding something that takes a lot of focus. If you bug me during such a time, I will often agree to things without even listening to you because it makes the distraction go away faster. I'm not ready to have a conversation about it or to deal with your protestation when I say "No", so I just say "uh-huh".
It's very obvious to everyone when this happens. And we all do it to an extent. Like when somebody is in the middle of furious texting and you say from across the room "Honey can you take out the trash?" they'll often say "ahuh" but then not do it becuase they don't even remember the interaction.
Almost everyone I know does that. My girlfriend included.
When it comes to important things, I should hope that adults would understand when it is and when it isn't a good time to make the ask. Like, if I'm scrambling to put my things together because the taxi is waiting downstairs to take me to the airport, don't use that exact moment to be like "Yo dude, the cartels are coming on monday, you have to get X Y and Z ready by tomorrow".
Basically, make sure I'm paying attention to you before you ask me for things that you intend to rely on.
I definitely understand the "yeah sure" bit, even as a "normal" :). Well, actually, I don't think I'm a "normal", I'm probably a "hyper", but... whatever.
As long as there's no mistaken signals, everything's cool. I mean, I sometimes "go rogue", I just tend to announce it a few weeks in advance ;).
No need to reply to any of this, I just found it very interesting to read this experience "from the other side" and from an "honest" perspective.
Anecdote: It only goes so far. There are quite a lot of people who will be quite pissed off with you (passively) if you're unreliable. I mean, friends will tolerate it, but let me tell you, as someone who's quite "reliable" (punctual, do what I promise, etc.) it's quite stressful to have to rely on someone who isn't. So stressful, in fact, that I wouldn't actually interact very much with this particular person I'm thinking of right now if I wasn't forced to (via circumstances beyond my control).
> [Snip Feynman] anecdote.
Feynman could get away with a lot of shit that almost nobody else would have done because he was a genius (and was recognized as such by his contemporaries).
Are you at "Feynman"-level?
> 90% of the time, being "reliable" goes against my best interests in terms of career and goals.
^ I don't see what the above...
> My value is that I can hunker down and make stuff. My value is not "tasks".
... has to do with this. Can you explain?