In federal civil cases, a party that needs more time should ask before the deadline passes. The court may then extend the time “for good cause.” A party that asks after the deadline has passed must show that it failed to act “because of excusable neglect.”
Asking early needs a reason. Asking late needs an excuse.
Under federal rules, an airline flying to, from or within the United States must tell passengers about a cancellation, a diversion or a delay of 30 minutes or more. It must do so “within 30 minutes after the carrier becomes aware of such a change in the status of a flight.” The information must appear at the boarding gate at U.S. airports, on the airline’s website and through its telephone reservation line.
A seller in the United States who takes orders by mail, phone or internet must have a reasonable basis for any shipping promise. Without a stated date, the seller must be able to ship within 30 days. If the order cannot ship on time, the seller must tell the customer and offer to cancel the order with “a full and prompt refund.”
The rule leaves no room for silence: “no notification to the customer can take longer than the time you originally promised.”
ASAP. — As soon as possible.
Sorry for the delayed response. — An apology for a reply that took a day or two.
Quick question. — A short question that should get a short answer.
Just a heads-up: this will take until Friday. — The extra time is announced before anyone asks.
On it. — I have started.
Any update? — Silence has gone on too long.
In August 2015 The New York Times published a long report on working life at Amazon. The Times reported that “emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered.”
Jeff Bezos responded in a memo to staff: “The article doesn’t describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day.”
In 2012 Leslie Perlow of Harvard Business School published Sleeping with Your Smartphone. In her survey of about 1,600 managers and professionals, 70 percent checked their smartphone within an hour of getting up. “26 percent confessed to sleeping with their smartphones.”
“Our respondents were caught in what we have come to call the cycle of responsiveness.” Those who do not keep up “risk being branded as less committed to their work.”
At the Boston Consulting Group, Perlow tested planned, predictable time off for consultants. After four years more than nine hundred teams in thirty countries had taken part.
John Boyd, a US Air Force colonel, built a model of decision-making out of his experience of air combat: observe, orient, decide, act, then repeat. His central claim was about speed — that cycling through the loop faster than your opponent is what wins, because it leaves them reacting to a situation that has already changed. As a Weapons School instructor he was nicknamed Forty Second Boyd, for his standing bet that starting from a position of tactical disadvantage he could defeat any student pilot within forty seconds.
The model spread from the Air Force into American business and sports coaching. It is a formal argument that acting quickly beats acting correctly.
The correct sequence exists in English and is used mainly to mock people who follow it too literally. Analysis paralysis names the failure state, paralysis by analysis is the older form, and both treat thinking as a thing that can go on too long and become a disease.
Named as a virtue and used in hiring and promotion. Amazon lists it among its leadership principles: speed matters in business, and many decisions are reversible and do not need extensive study. The word bias is chosen deliberately — it concedes that the tendency is not neutral, and recommends it anyway.
American military and business usage: a good plan executed now beats a perfect plan executed later. The claim is not that 80 percent is acceptable, but that the remaining 20 percent costs more in delay than it returns in quality.