# Unnecessary Freakout By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-07-11 If one's job involves reporting business data, the weeks around the end of quarters and years are particularly annoying and stressful. This is due to a series of organizational meetings where managers must present how things went. Inevitably, they will ask for a new view of the data or question the reasoning behind some data points requiring last-minute scrambling. Instead of monitoring the activity throughout the period, most managers wait until the very last second to get their presentations together. Some might say this is because they have many other things to manage, but most people know this isn't true. Instead, Parkinson's Law comes into play, and the work takes as long as one has to complete it. This is annoying for many analysts because they are intimately aware of this situation and how to avoid it, but managers and organizations continue to let artificial periods define business cycles. It doesn't have to be this way unless one works at a public company with reporting regulations. Even then, the managerial and organizational freakout at the end of the quarter or year is structurally unnecessary. Paradoxically, they may be psychologically necessary for many individuals. If most people require a deadline to get work done, the freakout is a symptom of the human condition to get work done. Only some people are this way, as plenty of people get their work done well ahead of time. The trouble comes when those who freakout encounter those who wish to avoid the freakout by getting their work done early. If those who avoid freakouts are in power positions, those who freakout are free to do so without additional stress. If the situation is reversed, stress and annoyance grow exponentially for those in lower positions who diligently work ahead to have it all blow up by their manager's freakout. One could argue that those who freakout are selfish and ignore the needs of others, but changing human nature is hard. Empathy often needs to be a two-way street. Systems and behaviors left unexamined destroy progress. #### Related Items [[Reporting]] [[Business]] [[Organization]] [[Cycles]] [[Paradox]] [[Psychology]] [[The Human Condition]] [[Management]] [[Power]]