Confessions · Advice & Questions · Oct 18

I tick shared tasks off before they're actually finished

Confessions

My teammate said she'd sent the booklet to print because everything on our shared list was marked complete. My captions were still in a document I hadn't sent her.

I help put together a small hobby club booklet. When I finish the interesting part of a task, I tick it off, even if the final checking or sending is left. It feels good to see the list shrink. Until now I've always caught up before anyone needed the result, so I treated the tick as encouragement for myself.

This time she acted on it. She managed to stop the print request, but had to redo the file after I'd said I was finished. I apologized for forgetting to send the captions. I didn't explain that my definition of finished had quietly become different from hers.

Should I tell her this has been a habit, or simply correct how I use the list? I don't want her to doubt every previous task, but she has been relying on information I knew wasn't quite true.

Discussion

3 community replies

@JulesAfterDark

The tick is doing two jobs, and your teammate only knows about one. You use it as a private reward; she uses it to decide whether the booklet can move forward. Give yourself a separate way to mark progress so the shared list can keep its agreed meaning.

@MorganSays

Correct any current ticks that still have work behind them before having the larger conversation. An honest explanation will be less useful if she can act on another premature completion while you're discussing the first one.

@TheoInTransit

Your apology described one forgotten message. The habit explains why the message was missing and why she couldn't tell. You can name the scope without inventing doubt about old work: say which current tasks need finishing, and that previous ones were completed later rather than when first marked.

I tick shared tasks off before they're actually finished

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