(b) Same – I have to mentally talk with myself about this;
(c) Thankfully, this one comes easy to me – I usually become genuinely interested in whatever I happen to be doing because I’m a damn perfectionist. This held true for all jobs I had during my career and all my past and current hobbies.
(d) Same as a) and b) – I have to concsiously gather such information. Thankfully, I usually become interested in the subject, provided that it aligns with my abilities and interests to at least some degree;
(e) Speaking of “methods that aren’t habitual for us”, I’m fascinated with the idea of Nakatomi space (not math), and I’d very much like to level up my own Nakatomi navigation abilities;
(f) No opinion yet;
(g) I sort of failed this one last time. I had a conjunction in my goal definition: “Build the best Widget on the planet AND have at least one million dollars per year in profit”. The overlap between the two subgoals turned out to be small. Plus, the goal had an internal conflict: I wasn’t really ready to sacrifice the perfection of the Widget in exchange for the million. As a result, I spent 10 years and actually built the Best Widget on the Planet, but it’s not earning me millions (though it’s pretty profitable and will have a healthy long lifecycle). Next time I’ll make sure that there are no conjunctions and conflicts in my goals.
(h) Not sure if I got your meaning right, but I never miss a chance to brag about my achievements.
Do you have some good heuristics to add? Do you have some good ideas for how to train yourself in such heuristics?
I’m not sure if these can be called heuristics, but I do have two techniques that I found to be very successful.
The first technique is “Concentrate on high-order bits”. Essentially, it’s a generalized 80⁄20 rule.
There’s always a number of activities I can do, and they all contribute towards my goal, but some of them contribute 128 points, some 64 points, and some just 1 point. I consciously try to find activities that contribute the most points, and then execute using various anti-akrasia tactics including those discussed here on LW.
The second technique is complimentary for the first one. “It’s macro time.”.
Basically, it boils down to spending a day or more doing nothing but looking at the goal and the big picture.
Starcraft players should be familiar with the meaning of ‘micro’ and ‘macro’. Micro and macro refer to micro- and macro-management. Micro is fine-grained real-time control of combat units (concentrating fire on dangerous enemies, using special abilities etc.) and macro refers to higher-level activities like maintaining the resource flow, building the base towards the desired tech, expanding to acquire more resources etc.
Personally, I happen to be pretty good at micro, both in games and in real life (as my co-workers will angrily confirm), so my biggest problem both in Starcraft multiplayer and in business was going too micro and not having enough mind cycles for macro.
To counteract this, I’m working to form a habit of allocating dedicated ‘macro days’, or perhaps even ‘macro weeks’ during which my primary task would be figuring out which activities are high-impact and which can be put on low-priority. I recently came back from the longest vacation I had in my last 10 years of work – full 45 days! – and found it to be extremely helpful in figuring out what I should do next.
Added: Did the above strategies help me achieve anything?
I’ve been using them for just about a year. So far the biggest achievement is a very solid, very powerful Version 2.0 of the Widget, done in a year, with no feature creep (thanks to concentrating on ‘high-order bits’ and cutting less-important stuff), no burnout on my part (due to macro time and non-conflicting goals) and almost no crunch time (a month prior to the release doesn’t count :)
(a) Yes. I have to do that consciously, verbally.
(b) Same – I have to mentally talk with myself about this;
(c) Thankfully, this one comes easy to me – I usually become genuinely interested in whatever I happen to be doing because I’m a damn perfectionist. This held true for all jobs I had during my career and all my past and current hobbies.
(d) Same as a) and b) – I have to concsiously gather such information. Thankfully, I usually become interested in the subject, provided that it aligns with my abilities and interests to at least some degree;
(e) Speaking of “methods that aren’t habitual for us”, I’m fascinated with the idea of Nakatomi space (not math), and I’d very much like to level up my own Nakatomi navigation abilities;
(f) No opinion yet;
(g) I sort of failed this one last time. I had a conjunction in my goal definition: “Build the best Widget on the planet AND have at least one million dollars per year in profit”. The overlap between the two subgoals turned out to be small. Plus, the goal had an internal conflict: I wasn’t really ready to sacrifice the perfection of the Widget in exchange for the million. As a result, I spent 10 years and actually built the Best Widget on the Planet, but it’s not earning me millions (though it’s pretty profitable and will have a healthy long lifecycle). Next time I’ll make sure that there are no conjunctions and conflicts in my goals.
(h) Not sure if I got your meaning right, but I never miss a chance to brag about my achievements.
I’m not sure if these can be called heuristics, but I do have two techniques that I found to be very successful.
The first technique is “Concentrate on high-order bits”. Essentially, it’s a generalized 80⁄20 rule.
There’s always a number of activities I can do, and they all contribute towards my goal, but some of them contribute 128 points, some 64 points, and some just 1 point. I consciously try to find activities that contribute the most points, and then execute using various anti-akrasia tactics including those discussed here on LW.
The second technique is complimentary for the first one. “It’s macro time.”.
Basically, it boils down to spending a day or more doing nothing but looking at the goal and the big picture.
Starcraft players should be familiar with the meaning of ‘micro’ and ‘macro’. Micro and macro refer to micro- and macro-management. Micro is fine-grained real-time control of combat units (concentrating fire on dangerous enemies, using special abilities etc.) and macro refers to higher-level activities like maintaining the resource flow, building the base towards the desired tech, expanding to acquire more resources etc.
Personally, I happen to be pretty good at micro, both in games and in real life (as my co-workers will angrily confirm), so my biggest problem both in Starcraft multiplayer and in business was going too micro and not having enough mind cycles for macro.
To counteract this, I’m working to form a habit of allocating dedicated ‘macro days’, or perhaps even ‘macro weeks’ during which my primary task would be figuring out which activities are high-impact and which can be put on low-priority. I recently came back from the longest vacation I had in my last 10 years of work – full 45 days! – and found it to be extremely helpful in figuring out what I should do next.
Added: Did the above strategies help me achieve anything?
I’ve been using them for just about a year. So far the biggest achievement is a very solid, very powerful Version 2.0 of the Widget, done in a year, with no feature creep (thanks to concentrating on ‘high-order bits’ and cutting less-important stuff), no burnout on my part (due to macro time and non-conflicting goals) and almost no crunch time (a month prior to the release doesn’t count :)
Cf. Umeshisms.
Yep, that’s where I took it from, couldn’t remember the source.