How many times have you been steadily working on something when “oops” all of a sudden you accidentally close the window, or hit the back button, or a power failure causes you to lose your work? It’s happened to me 3 times this week! Many programs are getting better at incorporating auto save but many, especially web-based applications do not have this obviously useful feature yet.
Most recently I was working on our company newsletter using the web-based newsletter creation tool, and accidentally hit the “go back” browser button rather than the “Undo” button within the newsletter application. Errrgh!
To make it more frustrating, even though the application says “be sure to save your work at regular intervals”, doing so, by clicking the save button (always at the bottom of the page…) takes you off your editing screen and asks if you want to test the newsletter now. Then you have to go through two screens to get back to the editing screen! How inefficient is that?
What can be done about this poor programming? Unfortunately very little, unless you design your own app, or shop around specifically for this feature next time. We can learn from it though. After all, what’s there to do but go back and start over?
Yes, it can feel like starting over is a huge loss, but what you do differently the second time around can make it better than before. You might catch mistakes you overlooked the first time, you may find an easier way to complete the task, or you may even have a creative moment that didn’t happen the first time around. You never know! It’s definatly not the end of the world, and if you don’t look at it as wasted time, then it won’t be.
How has being forced to start over made your work better?
I’ve found that, when I’ve had to start over for some reason (program error) or other (”operator” error – my goof), I often will do it the second time more efficiently in some way – an economy of words, or better word selection; a different layout, etc. So, although the ‘goof’ may require re-do, it often will incorporate rework and process improvement (PI) at the same time!