“You always have two choices: your commitment versus your fear.”   Sammy Davis, Jr.

It was my seventh day of the WordPress project that I have been doing as a training assignment with the StartUp, and the experience till date was great. I did learn so new concept about web development and work ethics.Just in the process, I came to know about 4-hour work theory that I will be sharing in this article.

After getting the new and improved work flow from tech lead, as the previous one has some issues. I started to dissect the project into modules. He told me to make issues of those modules in my GitHub repository. GitHub is a version control system which keeps the track of every change that I make in my files and also keeps them safe and secure by putting them into a cloud server. Also, it will be easy for others to review my code through my GitHub repository. 

So I started making issues of those modules into my GitHub repository and getting them solved. After working for a couple of hours on the issues he ask me about my progress and I replied: “in progress”. After working again for more couple of hours in the same issue he ask me again about the progress and my reply was the same as earlier “in progress”. After some time in my progress, I got stuck somewhere in my code, till now I was just solving my first issue of the WP project in the git repository. After putting more hours I was not able to figure it out where I went wrong. At last, I ask WP developer to help me out, he came to my desk and had a casual look at my work. After having a look he figure it out where I was going wrong and it was not in the code but the way I was approaching. He told me about his experience like even he used to do the same mistake and get into trouble. He asks me to use 4-hour work theory and then he explained to me about it and also recommended to use it for this project.

So the 4-hour work theory is to dissect our work in such a way that every module that needs to finish should not take more than 4 hours to complete. At first, I was hesitating to implement that theory into my way of working but after giving some thought to the idea it somehow started making sense to me. The reason I was hesitating because using 4-hour theory will put me in a situation where I have to make some commitments about my work and the fear of not fulfilling the 4-hour commitment was somehow putting me in a situation where I was not comfortable to use that theory. But when I look that theory with a new angle it started making sense to me. 

As if I committed my work to finish in 4 hours there will be two situations, either I will finish it in 4 hours or I will fail to finish it in committed time. if I able to finish the work in 4 hours I can ask others for reviewing my work and check whether if I am on the right track or not. The second situation is in which I fail to commit the work that I suppose to do in my committed time, In that case I can ask for their support because at that point of time it will be easy for them to find out where I got stuck because at that time they just have to review the work that I have done in previous 4 hours and because of this I can save couple of hours that I have been wasting earlier in my way of working to find out where I went wrong. This will somehow increase the productivity and also the amount of work that I will finish in my working hours.

4-hour work theory is effective. But it’s not something that you will learn just in one night it comes with practice and I am sure you will fail to commit at first and even after that, just like me and the fear of failure will stop you to commit more but I think it’s impossible to learn without being a failure. So learn to fail fast, in order to learn fast.