Spotting the Impossible
Sometimes what the client asks for isn't just hard—it's impossible. Nonsense.
Me: This variable named "Unique ID"—it's not unique.
Him: That is the Unique ID.
Me: I'll share my screen. You see, right here, rows 32 and 33. They're not unique.
Him: How do you know?
Me: Looking. Can you see my screen?
Him: This is critical to get done by end of day. Are you saying you can't do this?
Me: Possible, if there are other variables that distinguish between the two rows that I can use... wait... no, both these rows are identical. All variables are the same.
Him: So do that.
Me: No, there seems to be some sort of miscommunication here. There is no way to tell these rows apart without more information.
Him: Use the Unique ID.
Me: Calling a variable unique does not make it so. How about this, I can deduplicate the table, and then all the rows will be unique?
Him: No. You cannot remove any rows. They all must stay. Why can't you do this?
Me: I cannot do this because God himself could not do this.
I knew that no amount of hard work could push through this wall because I knew where the walls of impossibility were. At least, some of them.
The ask was incoherent. Everything that he said were indeed words, but together, in that order, they didn't point to anything in existence.
I happened to know that Thomas Aquinas wrestled with a version of this problem in the 13th century. Can God create a triangle whose angles sum to more than 180 degrees? Aquinas said no. Not because God lacks power, but because the question doesn't actually describe a possible state of affairs. It's not a limitation on omnipotence. It's just nonsense dressed up in the grammar of a coherent request.
Because I knew what I was being asked to do wasn't a thing, I wasn't distracted by anxieties regarding my own competence and I didn't fall for his social pressure. I saw that he was being silly, which let me focus on resisting his attempt to badger me into agreeing to perform tasks unavailable to even the Divine (at least according to one Saint in good standing).
When I said "I can't," he heard "I'm not skilled enough" or "I need more resources" or "I don't want to." Those are the normal meanings of "I can't" in a workplace. The idea that the task itself might be logically incoherent—that it might not be a task at all—doesn't fit the usual script.
If I were less sure that I knew the line between possible and not, then I could see the discomfort of the situation leading me to accidentally agreeing to deliver an undeliverable. If I had agreed to accomplish the impossible, then the failure would have been on me because I was tricked into participating in the problem.
Knowing the line between difficult and impossible matters.
It helps you detect lies.
If you know where the walls of possibility are, you know when a competitor or vendor is claiming to walk through them. Anyone who promises to do the impossible is either confused or lying. Either way: useful information.
It protects your sanity.
When someone asks you to do something that cannot be done, it's easy to feel like a failure for not delivering. Recognizing impossibility lets you locate the problem correctly: not in your competence, but in the request itself. You're not inadequate. You're being asked to be more powerful than Aquinas says God is.
It saves resources.
The difference between "this needs more effort" and "this cannot be done" is the most expensive distinction in business. Every dollar and hour poured into the impossible is pure waste. Spotting the wall early saves everything you would have thrown at it.
Right now, this kind of recognition is a high bar. If you can spot an impossible ask, you get to feel clever. It gives you an edge.
But imagine if it were the low bar. Baseline professional literacy. The kind of thing everyone just knows.
How many fights would be avoided? How many resources saved? How much stress eliminated?
Personally, I'm tired of meetings that feel like daycare. I long for a world where "that's not hard, it's incoherent" is a sentence everyone understands. Hopefully you can help bring us one step closer to that world.