Painting is such a great way to explain this. I've made many mistakes painting myself, and only came to appreciate the amount of extra work involved when I looked closely at how a pro does it.
Things that have caused me to screw up various paint jobs:
- not color matching white paint to my existing white paint, causing a visible color difference
- buying the wrong kind of brush for my paint
- buying cheap brushes and then needing to dig hairs out of the paint
- not priming, which caused me to have to do multiple layers to get good coverage
- buying cheap paint, which together with not priming, caused me to have to do multiple layers to get good coverage
- buying too little paint because I did not estimate carefully and then having to pause mid-job to go buy more paint and extending the total time to more than a week (because I did not have time to finish the job the next day)
- not buying and putting down floor protection which caused a lot of extra time in cleanup and never actually getting the paint out of the crevices in the floorboards
- not taping out the windows and doors which slowed down painting and required a lot of just-in-time cleanups
- taping out carelessly with poor-quality tape, causing paint to get under the tape, and defeating the purpose of taping
- not changing clothes before a tiny paint job and needing to throw away a very decent t-shirt because metal paint does not wash out well
- buying very expensive paint for a rough paint job in my garage because I did not spend a minute to think about the final effect, and wasting a bunch of money for a poor effect
To avoid each of these mistakes you have to spend time not-painting. It's time well spent.
I've tried doing a work breakdown, and watching a pro do it, it seems roughly 0.75 units of time for prep, 1 unit of time for painting, and 0.5 units of time for cleanup. I did not count the time for researching and buying, but once you add commute, it's easy for it to be 0.5 unit of time, depending on size of job. Roughly 1.5x-2x of not-painting to 1x of painting.
You can make many software-development analogies to painting.
If we're mature experience painters, all of these things not-painting things are still "doing things".
Things that have caused me to screw up various paint jobs:
- not color matching white paint to my existing white paint, causing a visible color difference
- buying the wrong kind of brush for my paint
- buying cheap brushes and then needing to dig hairs out of the paint
- not priming, which caused me to have to do multiple layers to get good coverage
- buying cheap paint, which together with not priming, caused me to have to do multiple layers to get good coverage
- buying too little paint because I did not estimate carefully and then having to pause mid-job to go buy more paint and extending the total time to more than a week (because I did not have time to finish the job the next day)
- not buying and putting down floor protection which caused a lot of extra time in cleanup and never actually getting the paint out of the crevices in the floorboards
- not taping out the windows and doors which slowed down painting and required a lot of just-in-time cleanups
- taping out carelessly with poor-quality tape, causing paint to get under the tape, and defeating the purpose of taping
- not changing clothes before a tiny paint job and needing to throw away a very decent t-shirt because metal paint does not wash out well
- buying very expensive paint for a rough paint job in my garage because I did not spend a minute to think about the final effect, and wasting a bunch of money for a poor effect
To avoid each of these mistakes you have to spend time not-painting. It's time well spent.
I've tried doing a work breakdown, and watching a pro do it, it seems roughly 0.75 units of time for prep, 1 unit of time for painting, and 0.5 units of time for cleanup. I did not count the time for researching and buying, but once you add commute, it's easy for it to be 0.5 unit of time, depending on size of job. Roughly 1.5x-2x of not-painting to 1x of painting.
You can make many software-development analogies to painting.
If we're mature experience painters, all of these things not-painting things are still "doing things".