Change title to how to do "complex" and "complicated". Just stop saying that, and I don't like the algorithmic approach to this and the vaque-ness of the word hard
How to do hard things
31–40 of 123 posts
Re: How to do hard things
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I looked for it before and reached the same conclusion -- it is just a made-up story.
These are the same pots they boil the frogs in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
and cook the soup in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup
Re: How to do hard things
#33If you enjoyed this then you'll likely find Claude Shannon's approach useful.
Re: How to do hard things
#34One way I accomplish this in programming is to write down what I wish I had. Like ok if I had a magical function that did xyz or if my data just happened to be in this easy to consume format, etc. works pretty well when stuck on a difficult problem.
Re: How to do hard things
#35Nice. I never explicitly realized this but this is how I always succeeded in doing hard proof-of-concept projects in a complex software product.
Single loop when I know the domain fairly well. And double loop in a complete new domain.
So, the question is: Are there other methods to approach problem-solving which gives positive success?
Re: How to do hard things
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are the same pots they boil the frogs in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
and cook the soup in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup
having turned to boiling the stone after exhausting all their methods of drawing blood from it
Re: How to do hard things
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comment reminds me of the exercise where a class was split into two cohorts, one was tasked with producing just one clay pot (I can't remember the thing now), while the other cohort was tasked with making one per day or something similar. Put simply, one group put all of its energy into producing just one, and the other group just turned out pot after pot after pot. At the end, so the story goes, the group that…
> (I can't remember the thing now) Don’t worry about the details; it was just a made-up story in the book Art & Fear ; I have never seen any evidence such a pottery class ever existed. https://kk.org/cooltools/art-fear/ > The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they p…
Looks like I have been pwned; thanks for pointing that out. Guess there was a reason that no good footnote existed in my memory for the origin of the anecdote.
Part of what stuck out to me, though, was that the anecdote aligned with my personal experiences of things that were once difficult until I ended up having to do them everyday for one reason or another.
But you're right, that's still a far way off from there being some actual study or otherwise repeatable exercise to show this in a clinical setting for learning new skills.
Re: How to do hard things
#38I conquered my own process by eventually realizing I could approach it exactly like a computer program. I architect how I am about to work. Now instead of just nebulously working I always know exactly what I'm working on. This frees my mind to focus on the task at hand and if I get sidetracked I can just look at my current goal and process list I setup before I started working, that I thought out rather well, and it gets me right back on track.
Re: How to do hard things
#39I used to make songs, not so much any more. Creating a song is hard you have to come up with both a good melody and good lyrics.
What seemed to work great is I tape-recorded myself playing and singing the initial version of the song. Then I played it and sang on top of it, even doing multi-tracking sometimes.
I found it was easy to come up with new words and new adjustments to the melody while singing on top of an existing version. Why? Perhaps because I didn't need to spend energy trying to remember both the old version and the new version. The tape-recorder remembered the old version, so I was not afraid of losing it.
Re: How to do hard things
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (I can't remember the thing now) Don’t worry about the details; it was just a made-up story in the book Art & Fear ; I have never seen any evidence such a pottery class ever existed. https://kk.org/cooltools/art-fear/ > The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they p…
Looks like I have been pwned; thanks for pointing that out. Guess there was a reason that no good footnote existed in my memory for the origin of the anecdote. Part of what stuck out to me, though, was that the anecdote aligned with my personal experiences of things that were once difficult until I ended up having to do them everyday for one reason or another. But you're right, that's still a far way off from there b…
The specific anecdote may have been fabricated, but the principle is sound. An example is the marshmallow problem[1], where a group is given some materials and is asked to build, under time pressure, the tallest tower they can with a marshmallow on top. Adults generally fare poorly because they don't experiment enough, building a tall tower and placing a marshmallow on the top as time is running out, only to have the tower collapse under the newly introduced weight. Children often do much better because they start with small, simple structures and iterate quickly.
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower?language=e...