Bill Myers

Recognizing when to bail is one of the major challenges of succeeding as a product developer.

One day last week, my plan was to write an article about a free java script that makes it easy to add multimedia elements to a web site.

It took about 30 minutes to write the article, but then it took me the rest of the day to get the script to actually work the way I wanted it to.

Maybe I should have bailed as soon as I found out there were problems with getting the program to work. But I didn't. Like a lot of people, I love a challenge, and took it as a personal test of skill to see if I could fix the program.

So what should have taken no more than a half hour, ended up taking up the entire day as I debugged and eventually rewrote a free program . . .

Sure, I ended up with cool tool (free to use at http://www.bmyers.com/members/480.cfm ), but it was not my plan or intention to invest an entire day trying to get a free program to work.

As product developers time is our most important asset. We have to be careful not to take on 'challenges' or 'tests of skill' where there is no real benefit. Doing so deprives you of time that could be better spent (with family, friends, or the business).