why is there never any time to do it right..but always time to do it over?

Answer 1

Take this scenario:

Do task A right the first time: 15 minutes
Do task A wrong the first time: 5 minutes
Fixing task A: 15 minutes
Percent of times get caught doing it wrong: 25%

Perform task A 40 times

Do it right every time - 600 minutes
Do it wrong the first time - 200 minutes
plus correcting 25% - 150 minutes = 350 minutes

It's cheaper and more time efficient to do it wrong and fix it sometimes than to do it right the first time.

This is exactly the mentallity behind the quality of every consumer good and service. The time and money you save "getting away" with doing it wrong pays for the instances that you have to do it again correctly.

The trouble is - the customer suffers. But for some reason the customer frequently tolerates it.

Answer 2

of course you could take money as a reason...i'll take evolution.

if you always waited to have a perfect plan of something in mind before you actually build it - you would never build anything!
in an evolutionary sense, there is no way of knowing every single characteristic of a machine before you build that thing and turn it on to see it running - in actuality, how are you going to know if that thing will run at all, if you don't build it?

Edison once was asked: "you spent so much time (and money) on your work on lightbulbs, but you still haven't come up with a solution. how do you justify all the funding?"
he said: "you are right, i haven't come up with a solution on how to build a light bulb - but i have come up with 2000 solution on how NOT to build one."

Answer 3

i agree this is one of my pet peeves, and i like free's answer, that was the mentality at my last workplace, though i dont think i ever heard it stated so clearly as free did, i now have a new job (i was recruited) since the old company lost several contracts for just that reason, and now my new company has them, and i have a nice raise, lol
it does seem kinda sweet, since i was the one ridiculed for being "correct" too often, and paying to much attention to detail

Answer 4

human nature.