Work: “I don’t know”

I don’t know how you can accomplish anything on a project that has more than two people on it without meetings and reviews, but I can’t understand why two hours of work requires ten hours of meetings, hasty preparation for these meetings, and subsequent associated private explanations and agreements. I find myself to qualify in preparation for a meeting while I think about three major issues yet undecided for a chapter that’s due in two weeks. More and more I find myself saying what I’m going to do at least twice before I get time to do it. This sort of work is entrancing but lacks substance, like a diet of jello (there’s always room for more). It’s tastes OK until you realize the gelatin is boiled out of the bones of a dead horse, and you were kicking it before it died. I’m trying to get out an impression of what my work is like. This aspect is easy to talk about because it does lack substance. Anything with substance is confidential.

2 February 1988