Design By Exhaustion

You know, when you've spent hours, days or weeks discussing and designing some feature, and finally you agree to just about any design, because you don't have the energy to work on it any more.

A common symptom when you're doing BigDesignUpFront.

Worse still is the fact that people are going to be too nauseated to change anything they've beaten into the ground that way... even if they sense that it should change. -- MichaelFeathers

Very common and important anti-pattern in my experience. See ExtremeIconoclasm --RichardDrake

Similar to InterviewingTillExhaustion?, when one interviews many candidates until finally you just take someone who seems "sort of ok". Also reminiscent of grading huge numbers of tests for final exams when everything starts to look the same (please don't tell the students).

DogBert alludes to this in one of his pieces on management. He states that managers have a large bladder-to-brain ratio. The idea is that coffee is served at many meetings, and the person with the largest bladder can argue the longest. People with lower bladder-brain ratios will give in just to use the toilet, so he with the biggest bladder has his way.

Pair up. Have your partner cover for you while you hit the bathroom, tabling all decisions until you get back, and you do the same for your partner. Let that mega-bladder guy stand alone until you get a real compromise. Or don't drink before meetings. --PeteHardie

My solution: don't drink coffee.