Communicate. so many times I think I’m expressing something uncomplicated, and it gets misunderstood. I’ve asked many clients who finally understood much later, “what words could I have said where you would have understood me the first time?” and I’ve not gotten much help. Either things are way more complicated than I think, people aren’t listening, or I’m too boring.
Remain patient with disorganization. Once I had a client who assured me he had no other data at all, so I had to use inference and analytical work to bridge the gaps in his data. It was a ton of work; I had to do running balances, day by day, exchange by exchange, and find the gaps and bridge them. Then, after I had done all that work, my client came to me and said “I found more data!” and I had to unwind all the analytical work, fold in the new data, and then do all the analytical work anew. Every time I’ve said to a friend or family member or girlfriend “sorry I can’t come to dinner I have to work” I think about that client, and I wonder if maybe fuck my clients I’ll just live my life?
Check In. often, I’m working with giant data sets and I have to do meticulous work. Sometimes I’ll get into a rhythm where I know exactly what I have to do, and I’ll turn off my phone and email and just do four or five straight 16-hour days grinding through the data to get my work done. From time to time, I come to the end of that and my client says “I wanted you to check in with me every 10 hours. I’m not happy about this.” And I get that. And also, reading a bunch of emails from a bunch of clients about their different data sets ends that rhythm. So it’s often a choice between getting into rhythm and getting work done, or going much slower and checking in all the time. Nobody is ever happy and I’ve not yet figured out a way to split the difference.
Remember I’m dealing with humans who are doing something they don’t like. Nobody likes having to deal with their accountants. I sometimes get robot brain, and forget my clients are living lives and dealing with stress.
Use my imagination as to how crypto people will invent stupid idiotic nonsense ways to make life worse for everyone in the world. Boy do they, but I always forget. I am always surprised at how dumb the ‘financial instruments’ are. I go on thinking the financial schemes and reports will surely be intelligible, despite years of evidence to the contrary.