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Embrace the Grind

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Re: Embrace the Grind

#61

Post by travisjungroth »

legerdemain wrote: post #52

OK, so you spend hours and days sealing threes of clubs into tea packets. But how do you make the volunteer pick the three of clubs during the show?

That's an entire family of tricks called card forces. I used to have a whole routine based on them. Here's a blog post with three of them: https://conjuror.community/best-card-forces/

I had about a 50% hit rate on the natural force. You just fan through the cards and time it so they pick the one you want. Wouldn't work for the tea trick, but works fine if you have a fallback.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#62

Post by hyperpape »

jldugger wrote: post #45

> For example, I once joined a team maintaining a system that was drowning in bugs. There were something like two thousand open bug reports. Nothing was tagged, categorized, or prioritized. The team couldn’t agree on which issues to tackle > I spent almost three weeks in that room, and emerged with every bug report reviewed, tagged, categorized, and prioritized. Honestly, this is one of those traps a team can fall in…

Interruptions are definitely harmful, but if you look at what he did, he could have done it in spite of meetings. What would be bad would be starting it and being told (implicitly or explicitly) not to finish it.

Better to have meetings than to have what you’re doing cancelled several weeks in.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#63

Post by akiselev »

olivertaylor wrote: post #51
akiselev wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe a similar sort of thing with software would be spending time on animations -- the result is a cool flourish, but it lasts 0.15 seconds and it took 3 days to get it just right, and it's impossible to quantify how worthwhile it was beyond a gut feeling. Even still, that's not even in the same ballpark in terms of time or effort. The difference is that movies are all or nothing productions in an industry set up…

> they emphasize the creative aspect far more relative to tech since they're competing over form not function Yes and no. There are a lot of "make it fit in the box" requirements when making a movie. The unions mandate a certain make up of the crew, and a certain size, the stage rental costs are a certain amount, there are various laws and corporate budgets to take into account; all that adds up to a certain number o…

>* So while, yes, the industry is set up to support a creative endeavor, that industry runs on a template that makes certain things possible and certain things very difficult. But brilliant producers and directors find ways around it.*

Totally agree, and IME that's par for the course for any creative endeavor that becomes profitable but unpredictable, whether its cinema, music, or software engineering. I meant more that the final product is judged on aesthetic qualities more so than in software, so the industry naturally allows for more creative expression at the highest levels of decision making.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#64

Post by travisjungroth »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #54
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not gonna disagree but I want to add a couple things. 1. Kids with ADHD probably can't develop executive function as fast or as far as other kids. I'm pretty sure I have it, it explains the repeated performance reports of "You're good when you apply yourself and useless when you don't." Unfortunately I struggle to _choose_ to apply myself. Willpower doesn't seem to come naturally to me, even after 10 years as a p…

ADHD is a difficult topic to discuss on HN. I'll preface this by saying that I'm not doubting your situation, or any other commenter's particular situation. This [section of my] comment is meant to be general: In the context of this mentoring group, we go through phases where almost everyone suspects they have ADHD for various reasons. This is usually triggered by one of two things: Either someone shares an online "D…

You said "This comment is meant to be general." and then quoted and replied to things the commenter shared about themselves.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#65

Post by habitue »

jldugger wrote: post #45

> For example, I once joined a team maintaining a system that was drowning in bugs. There were something like two thousand open bug reports. Nothing was tagged, categorized, or prioritized. The team couldn’t agree on which issues to tackle > I spent almost three weeks in that room, and emerged with every bug report reviewed, tagged, categorized, and prioritized. Honestly, this is one of those traps a team can fall in…

One of the most important things I think Kanban[1] emphasizes is that once you eliminate unnecessary bottlenecks, you're left with unavoidable bottlenecks, and this naturally means there will be slack. Explicitly expecting slack time is super useful to allow developers at all levels of seniority to do surprising and necessary things like this that would otherwise never be scheduled.

[1] not the project board shape, but the original process it's named after where you set a hard cap on work in progress in each stage to find out where bottlenecks are.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#66

Post by fartcannon »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #54
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not gonna disagree but I want to add a couple things. 1. Kids with ADHD probably can't develop executive function as fast or as far as other kids. I'm pretty sure I have it, it explains the repeated performance reports of "You're good when you apply yourself and useless when you don't." Unfortunately I struggle to _choose_ to apply myself. Willpower doesn't seem to come naturally to me, even after 10 years as a p…

ADHD is a difficult topic to discuss on HN. I'll preface this by saying that I'm not doubting your situation, or any other commenter's particular situation. This [section of my] comment is meant to be general: In the context of this mentoring group, we go through phases where almost everyone suspects they have ADHD for various reasons. This is usually triggered by one of two things: Either someone shares an online "D…

Your comment makes me think of when they first designed jet cockpits for pilots. It was expensive to modify the planes, so they designed it to the 'average' person.

The result is that no one fit in it.

Expectations that other people can perform like you do if they just put their mind to it is so blind to the reality of human experience that it's hard to respond.

https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

Re: Embrace the Grind

#67

Post by beaconstudios »

fartcannon wrote: post #66
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD is a difficult topic to discuss on HN. I'll preface this by saying that I'm not doubting your situation, or any other commenter's particular situation. This [section of my] comment is meant to be general: In the context of this mentoring group, we go through phases where almost everyone suspects they have ADHD for various reasons. This is usually triggered by one of two things: Either someone shares an online "D…

Your comment makes me think of when they first designed jet cockpits for pilots. It was expensive to modify the planes, so they designed it to the 'average' person. The result is that no one fit in it. Expectations that other people can perform like you do if they just put their mind to it is so blind to the reality of human experience that it's hard to respond. https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us…

It's also a mistake to think that people are static. We can improve ourselves through the expenditure of effort. The reality is like the parent said: there are limits to everybody's abilities, but you'll probably have to work hard as hell to reach yours (not targeting you personally, the general case "you"). If you believe that your present abilities are all you'll ever have then you're wasting what could be tremendous potential out of false self imposed limitations.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#68

Post by fartcannon »

beaconstudios wrote: post #67
fartcannon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment makes me think of when they first designed jet cockpits for pilots. It was expensive to modify the planes, so they designed it to the 'average' person. The result is that no one fit in it. Expectations that other people can perform like you do if they just put their mind to it is so blind to the reality of human experience that it's hard to respond. https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us…

It's also a mistake to think that people are static. We can improve ourselves through the expenditure of effort. The reality is like the parent said: there are limits to everybody's abilities, but you'll probably have to work hard as hell to reach yours (not targeting you personally, the general case "you"). If you believe that your present abilities are all you'll ever have then you're wasting what could be tremendo…

Who said anything about not improving, the parent comment believes the ADHD sufferer is simply not working hard enough.

He's trying to show him where his bootstraps are.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#69

Post by beders »

This is so true for every bug tracking system I ever encountered in any company.

We called it the P3 graveyard.

And there's always that lingering feeling that there are few nuggets hidden in there that would resolve the majority of them.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#70

Post by wott »

legerdemain wrote: post #52

OK, so you spend hours and days sealing threes of clubs into tea packets. But how do you make the volunteer pick the three of clubs during the show?

He has put in his article a link to the Wikipedia definition of 'Forcing' (and once there, there is a link to a book describing techniques).

edit: sorry, I hadn't refreshed and seen the other 2 replies before I replied myself.

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