Tasks

The whole thing started on the Midwest Dev Chat Slack, when someone posted a screenshot from their work Slack that read:

The fact that we only have "Herculean task" and "Sisyphean task" feels so limiting. So here's a few more tasks for your repertoire:

• Icarian Task: When you have a task you know is going to fail anyways, so why not have some fun with it before it all comes crashing down.
• Cassandrean Task: When you have to deal with people you know won't listen to you, despite having accurate information, and having to watch them fumble about when you told them the solution from the start.
• Odyssean Task: You'll complete but it will take 20 times longer than it should and involve multiple side quests and mini-adventures.

From those first screenshots it took off, with the wits on Midwest Dev Chat adding more:

• Achillean Task: A task shipped with known issue.
• Escherian Task: Looks achievable until you examine the details. (Not from mythology, but still pretty great.)
• Hydraeous Task: The task you complete spawns two new tasks.
• Theseusian Task: Scope creeps so many times, and so far, that philosophers spend centuries arguing if any of the original scope remains.

I liked these an awful lot, and I thought the smart folks on the Rands Leadership Slack would, too, so I posted them there, referencing the original MWDC posts. While I was already wishing I could take credit for the first batch, the Rands folks just went bananapants with the idea. This is the brilliance of those folks, not me, and all accolades are due them. Only one of these is my own original thought. The rest come from the minds of smarter, more creative (and apparently better read) people...

• Atlassian Task: you’re writing all the Jira tickets.
• Chronean Task: Didn't I already do this task?
• Damoclean Task: A task you enjoy doing, but there is always this underlying sense of foreboding and anxiety while doing so.
• Diogenian Task: absolute dog's work, but better than talking to people
• Dionysian Task: Who cares, it's Friday.
• Epicurian Task: I just like doing it this way.
• Gordian Task: Instead of doing the task, you delete the ticket or maybe the whole epic.
• Gorgon Task: Whenever you approach someone about your task, they stonewall you.
• Kronusian Task: Driving away people that threaten your power and position.
• Minotian Task: Just a lot of bull.
• Midasean Task: a very lucrative endeavour, but might leave you feeling hungry for more substantive work.
• Narcissian Task: Just make it pretty.
• Orphean Task: you have to write this entire service in isolation, but the moment you run one integration test the other services will block you.
• Pandorean Task: When you have a task to do that you know will unleash chaos on the world when complete.
• Poseidan Task: When you are drowning in the work.
• Penelopean Task: same as an odyssean task but nobody talks about it because it is a woman doing it.
• Promethean Task: Do some hero work for your team and then get picked apart by upper management for all eternity.
• Siren Task: Your sole task is to distract others from doing their tasks.
• Trojan Task: I'm only doing this task so I can sneak this other thing into the next release.

So there you go, there they are in all their glory, with a few small minor edits. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

I did leave a few off the list here if they duplicated others, if I am not smart enough to understand the reference, or if I just flat missed one. Forgive me.

Artwork: "Sisyphus" by Jeffrey Hummel

Contributors (who wished to be identified) include Blaise Vignon, Caleb Huitt, Steven Harrison and Michael Van Nieuwenhoven. Thank you all, smart and funny people!

If you submitted any of these and would like to be credited, please let me know via a Github Issue. Or if you know my email address, just shoot me an email. That's fine, too. Be sure to tell me how you would like to be credited.