“Can you just do this quickly before you go?”

It looks small. A tidy little task. Maybe a chart to update. A few lines of copy. A tweak to a report. Except it’s not. Because to do it properly, you need to:

Dig through three separate databases with incompatible formats
Cross-check a code no one’s used since 2019
Ask someone from another team who left early for school pickup
Rewrite it in a completely new template
Oh—and ideally send it through comms for approval

Congratulations. You’ve been handed a TARDIS Task—something that looks small from the outside but, once opened, expands into a vast and confusing landscape that demands navigating strange lands, meeting alien beings, potentially some physical danger, a moral dilemma and lots and lots of running.

Much like the Doctor’s time machine, these tasks aren’t just “bigger on the inside”—they take you places you never expected to go. And they’re usually handed over at 5:07 PM with a confident wave, as if the laws of time and effort simply don’t apply.

TARDIS Tasks reveal a failure to comprehend the true shape of work. It’s the assumption that:

If it’s quick for me, it’s quick for you
If I don’t need to do the groundwork, then there is none
If it looks small, it is small

This kind of casual handoff shifts time, stress, and complexity onto someone else without acknowledgment, context, or support.

You don’t need a time machine to fix this. Just ask a few (and better) questions. Before you delegate something that seems simple, ask:

What steps are actually involved?
Will this require access, coordination, or chasing?
Is now the right time—or would scheduling it properly save time and quality?

Remember: It might appear to be effortless, but only for you. And perhaps for those who make this work look seamless, not every task is what it seems.

TARDIS Tasks: Why Some Jobs Warp Time and Demand Running Shoes