If you have no idea how to do the thing, isn't reading about how others did the thing doing the thing?
Things that aren't doing the thing
11–20 of 220 posts
Re: Things that aren't doing the thing
#12I'm inspired by this and want to extend it, perhaps telescopically, by discussing what the thing is. Sometimes we see our task as being, "do C," and we forget the "B" and "A" that come before. Maybe you can't do "C" without discussing it ("B") or researching how others did it ("A"). In these cases, we shouldn't simply think the thing is "C"—the thing must first be "A," then "B," and then, "C." If we forget this, we'r…
You pay a doctor for a consultation. saying you paid the doctor for medical school and for the legacy of doctors that came before him is.... wrong.
Re: Things that aren't doing the thing
#13If you have no idea how to do the thing, isn't reading about how others did the thing doing the thing?
No, you’ll still need to do it.
Re: Things that aren't doing the thing
#14I wonder what thing the author was avoiding when they published this thing ;)
Re: Things that aren't doing the thing
#15Having a meeting about doing the thing isn’t doing the thing
Re: Things that aren't doing the thing
#16One day, when I get enough spare time, I will make the thing. I even have some components ready.
Until then I daydream of how I will make it and how it will fit together.
If I never get round to it then that time will have been wasted. But if I do, all that daydreaming will have been useful mental prototyping.
But was it «doing the thing»?
Re: Things that aren't doing the thing
#17Writing a thing about things that aren't doing the thing isn't doing the thing unless the thing happens to be writing a thing about things that aren't doing the thing
Writing a comment about a thing that talks about things that aren't doing the thing isn't doing the thing unless the thing happens to be writing a comment about a thing that talks about things that aren't doing the thing
Re: Things that aren't doing the thing
#18And now we have a whole post about not doing the thing, which is also not doing the thing.
Re: Things that aren't doing the thing
#19If you have no idea how to do the thing, isn't reading about how others did the thing doing the thing?
This hints at the antithesis to this article
Doing a thing involves doing it, but it's very unlikely that doing a thing will involve exactly one atomic movement. So you have cutpoints at doing the thing.
So to do the thing you first have to decide to do the thing. You have to decide what the thing is, or at least have enough of a vision of the thing to take the first step at doing a thing that might look like the thing.
So "doing the thing" involves a lot of doing things that aren't the thing, but without which you won't get towards the thing.
In other words: sitting down and writing down what the thing is _can very well_ be part of doing the thing.
There's a sort of philosophical point too, about whether the thing is what you think it is. Plenty of people have had the "I thought this feature was going to do X, you thought it was going to do Y, and we all realised the mismatch very late in the process".
I think both visions of the world are valid, and things you can keep in your mind at the same time to deploy as needed.
Re: Things that aren't doing the thing
#20If you have no idea how to do the thing, isn't reading about how others did the thing doing the thing?
"Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be entreated not to hit the nail at all." -- Nietzsche