Joe Auricchio

In the general case, percent of work completed is a logarithmic function of time spent.

When you start work, you get things done at a pretty good pace. Over time, you start to slow down. As the task approaches completion, you really slow down to accomplishing almost nothing.

This is a good approximation for time significantly less than the deadline. However, as the deadline approaches, the derivative increases rapidly, following the gamma function. Immediately before the deadline, work is accomplished at a nearly infinite rate.

As the deadline approaches, you work faster and faster to get it done; the last hour before the deadline is the most productive time known to man.

I have seen this pattern in almost everything I do, and I’ve been refining this theory over the past few months. I have further noticed that the pattern applies to most of the engineers I know. There are notable exceptions: some people cannot bear to leave things to the last minute, and get as much as possible done ahead of time.
These people are silly.

The next step would be harnessing my own pattern of productivity. False deadlines, drastically inflated requirements (to keep the early logarithmic rise going for a long time), and making that gamma function kick in earlier: all these will let me get more done.