Updated "greek task list":

orphean task: when you almost succeed, but lose everything the moment you turn around to check your progress.

daedalean task: when you’re forced to design something brilliant and functional… that you yourself will inevitably become trapped inside.

medusan task: when your project becomes so horrifying that everyone involved freezes in place rather than deal with it.

tantaline task: when success is right there, but bureaucracy or budget cuts keep snatching it away at the last moment, forever.

pandoran task: when fixing one small issue unleashes a thousand new ones, but hey — at least there’s still hope somewhere in the ticket backlog.

odyssean task: when the assignment technically has an end, but it’s buried under so many side quests that you forget what the original goal was.

narcissian task: when the entire effort is about maintaining appearances rather than achieving anything of substance.

promethean task: when you give people a powerful new tool that could transform their work — and are punished eternally for doing so.

orestian task: when the mess you’re cleaning up is the direct result of the last cleanup you performed.

thesean task: when the only way to finish is to disassemble everything piece by piece — until you’re no longer sure if what’s left is the same project you started.

achillean task: when your work is flawless except for that one fatal oversight that will, inevitably, destroy you.

penelopean task: when you diligently undo by night what you accomplish by day, just to keep the stakeholders pacified.

midasean task: when everything you touch turns into paperwork, compliance documents, or gold-plated nonsense nobody actually needs.

gordian task: not intended to be actually done, but violence is the answer.

This was inspired by a post that reached me as screenshot:

@masek

Excellent work, sir.

There’s also the full gamut of loss and revenge tragedies, such as the Medean Gambit - when the person you’ve been helping with a project decides to cut you out and take all the glory with another partner, so you burn *everything* to the ground and go work for another company.

@Badgardener All the Greek tragedies and myths are surprisingly modern once you adapt the vocabulary.

@masek

There should be some kind of saying, about how if we don’t look at this stuff and pay attention to it, it’ll keep happening…

@Badgardener

#include

@masek I love it 😆

Many of these task types seem familiar, now I know what to call them.