Effort Threshold

I’ve noticed something: If frequent tasks take too much effort they don’t get done. Unless it is dirt simple, people procrastinate. It’s as if there is an effort threshold. Easy tasks slip under the threshold and get done. Involved tasks…well…maybe we can start on them tomorrow.

I’ve seen this happen with all sorts of things:

• Running unit tests: If it takes more than a single command or button-press to run tests, developers will only run them once a project. If you’re lucky.
• Committing code: if your check-in process has too much red-tape, developers avoid checking in. Result? You might as well not be using version control.
• Paying bills with checks instead of online: Putting checks in envelopes? Maybe tomorrow.
• Editing digital photos before posting them to Flickr: I still don’t have a smooth enough workflow so photos sit on my computer unprocessed for way too long.
• Writing blog posts: And now we get to the real point of this post…

Posting to Blosxom took just a little too much effort. TR posted some articles back in November and December I wanted to respond to, but I haven’t gotten around to. Admittedly, this was partly my fault because my CoolURI scheme added a few extra steps to posting. I like Blosxom and it was great software for starting out but it was time for something with more features. So, I switched to WordPress. The out-of-box experience is great:

• simple installation
• web-based interface for posting
• web-based configuration interface
• Larger user base so plugins and themes are plentiful
• comments
• pages load a lot faster than before (again, my fault because my CoolURI plugins slowed Blosxom down)
• tags (well, categories but you can use them like tags if you like)

So, let’s see if this allows blogging to slip under the effort threshold again…