Do it right the first time

Thoughts for the weekend

I believe in prioritizing. Doing things only which will provide immediate value. This helps most of the times. But it has been painful when I have tried to skim through tasks and not doing it completely right the first time. It always comes back. And when you have to correct it, it usually takes more time than it would have taken to do it right, the first time. It also becomes complex.

Doing things correctly the first time not only speeds up the task in hand, but also helps with focusing on one thing at a time. When something has to be corrected repeatedly, lot of time is lost in switching your context back and forth.

We had a fundamental belief that doing it right the first time was going to be easier than having to go back and fix it. And I cannot say strongly enough that the repercussions of that attitude are staggering. I’ve seen them again and again throughout my business life. — Steve Jobs

Everyone agrees that doing it right the first time has many benefits. But there are always reasons to just get by doing what is required than to do it right. One of the most prominent reasons is time crunch. In such cases it is important to highlight and inventorize what is being missed when doing things first time and have a plan in place to close the things as soon as the time pressure ends.

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