He spent three nights on it. The work could have waited until next week.

Manager Nakamura's eyes were red. It was Thursday morning.

When I asked why, he said he had missed the last train for three nights since Monday to finish the materials for the executive presentation. It was a task that had been dumped on him at last week's meeting.

I was at that meeting, too. As the manager of the neighboring department, sitting at the far end.

The instructions came from two superiors.
First, the executive said, 'I need this ASAP.'
Then the department manager followed up with, 'Yes, ASAP.'
The same four characters, twice. Manager Nakamura nodded solemnly.
I nodded, too. With a look of understanding.

Manager Nakamura said this:

'Since you both said ASAP...'

Both of them said it. So, he apparently rushed at double speed.
He is a man who joined the company at the same time as me, a man who seems like the embodiment of seriousness.
He is the fastest in the department at spotting typos.
The only circuit he lacks from birth is the one that questions 'ASAP'.

On his desk this Thursday, there were three convenience store receipts lying face down.
One from 11:00 PM on Tuesday, one from just after midnight on Wednesday, and the date on the third one was blurred and unreadable.
His charging cable had stayed at the office for three nights.
The all-nighters of a meticulous man leave meticulous traces.

Since this is a lab, I will verify it.Hypothesis: 'ASAP' is not a unit of time.

I realized later that in that room, the same 'ASAP' was ringing at two different speeds.

The executive's 'ASAP.' He is an impatient person.
His catchphrases are 'Explain it in three minutes' and 'Thick documents are documents where the writer hasn't decided what they want yet.'
Manager Nakamura interpreted that person's 'ASAP' as 'right now.'

The department manager's 'ASAP.' He is someone whose Slack 'read' receipts are three days late.
His 'ASAP' probably could have been left to simmer longer.

The same words secretly become something else depending on the perceived speed of the person who spoke them.
And yet, the sound is exactly the same.
Manager Nakamura, out of the two 'ASAPs,' stuck to the ceiling of the one that wasthe most senior and the loudest.

If it were just one superior's 'ASAP,' it would still be a gamble.
It's a toss-up either way.
But when two people's requests overlap, a serious person doesn't add them up; they multiply them.
They dutifully multiply the anxiety of two people.
Manager Nakamura's three nights were, in short, the answer to that multiplication.
Even though no one had ever provided such a formula.

Let's dissect it.What is it about 'ASAP' that confuses people so much?

Previously,I wrote that 'I will consider it' is a five-character dialect.
If that is a dialect of meaning, this isa four-character dialect of speed.
The disease name is the same for both sisters.
It neatly avoids the emergence of responsibility.
If you say 'by 3:00 PM on Thursday,' the responsibility for setting the deadline falls on the person who said it. Whether it's too early or too late, it becomes the fault of the person who decided it.
'ASAP' does not generate a single character of that responsibility.
It allows you to outsource the entire task of deciding when it should be done to the person receiving the request.

'ASAP' is not a deadline. It is the postponement of the effort to decide a deadline.

The person who receives it has no choice but to guess the speed limit of the superior's 'ASAP.'
But there are no speed limit signs posted.
That is why the more serious a person is, the more they steer into the fastest lane of 'right now.'
And the ones who end up in an accident are always the ones who drove the most seriously.

Come to think of it, when I was a new employee, I was also killed many times by my superior's 'ASAP.'
When I finished it over the weekend and submitted it, they said, 'I wasn't in that much of a hurry,' and all the strength left my body.
I knew that feeling of deflation.
I knew it, and yet, at that meeting, I did nothing.

I confess.
In that room,the words 'By when do you need it?' were on the tip of my tongue.
They were on the tip of my tongue—and I swallowed them. In front of the executive and the department manager, I didn't want to pay the price of those three awkward seconds of turning back the conversation.

He skimped on three seconds. In return, Section Manager Nakamura paid with three nights.

When I apologized, he thought for a moment and then said.

"No. I just didn't know what was below 'ASAP'."

Below?

"I know what's above. It means right now. But the latest possible time that's still safe—that bottom line wasn't written in either boss's instructions. It was scary, so in the end, I had no choice but to stick to the top."

Because he could only see the ceiling, he ran at the ceiling.

When the floor isn't defined, people keep running at the highest possible point.

There is a word called 'expected value.'
But the two 'ASAPs' contained no value of expectation.
An expectation without a value is a blank check where the person who hears it fills in the amount as they please.
Section Manager Nakamura wrote 'three nights' on two blank checks.
If he were a less confident person, he might have written 'half a day.'
The same words change their value arbitrarily based on the amount of confidence the receiver has.

From the following week, I changed my role.

Every time a boss said 'ASAP' in a meeting, I decided to ask from the end of the table.
“Just to be sure, by when do you need it?”
With just this, the temperature in the room drops a little.
Because a floor is being drawn in a room where only the ceiling was visible.
The job of someone in the middle is probably this.
It's not a clever summary. It's voicing a single floor line.

The effect appeared in unexpected people as well.
Following that flow, when I asked Mr. Yamada, 'Tuesday noon is fine,' specifying a time, he looked relieved.
When I asked him why, he said this.
"With the usual 'ASAP,' I feel like I'm being watched. I feel like if I don't run at full speed, I won't be evaluated."
A deadline without a floor acted as an invisible surveillance for serious people.
A specific time is a deadline, but at the same time, it was also the passcode to disable that surveillance.

Today's verification results.
'ASAP' is a dialect of speed.
The moment someone asks 'by when,' it returns to being a normal, proper deadline.

By the way.

On Thursday, when Section Manager Nakamura's materials were finished, I took the plunge and asked the executive directly. By when did you need that, I asked.

The executive said without looking up from his documents.

"Oh, that? Next week is fine. I just said 'ASAP', that's all."

The 'ASAP' that was the most important and the loudest was the one that was in the least hurry.

Section Manager Nakamura's three nights were three nights that would have completely vanished if someone had asked 'by when.'
I was sitting in the seat closest to that someone.

Since then, at the end of the meeting table, I have been the person who pays the three seconds.

The market price for awkwardness is three seconds per instance. Compared to his three nights, it's incredibly cheap.