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Breaking down tasks

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Re: Breaking down tasks

#111

Post by sanderjd »

rhapsodic wrote: post #103
sanderjd wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have come to think of this as "The Anna Principle" in organizing my own work: > when faced with uncertainty, one must simply focus on doing "The Next Right Thing." [0] This is not to trivialize it! Figuring out the next right thing to do is hard, but also the most valuable part of planning, in my view. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_Right_Thing#Synopsis

"Do the next right thing" was a phrased used by Alcoholics Anonymous long before that 2019 movie came out, so I don't think calling it "The Anna Principle" is appropriate.

I didn't know this! That just makes me appreciate this more, and thank you for making me aware of it.

But thinking of it as "The Anna Principle", named after a character from a children's movie, remains way more fun. It was already a tongue-in-cheek-ism to ascribe what I really do believe is a strong foundational idea (not just in project planning, but in life) to a character in a children's movie.

By the way, I tracked this back to at least one earlier use of a similar construction (which maybe is implied to be the basis of its use in AA) by Carl Jung:

> But if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate.

Excerpted from: https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/12/07/carl-jung-next-rig...

But I suspect this is an even older, indeed timeless, idea. But ascribing it to a modern well-known movie character makes it more fun and memorable :)

Re: Breaking down tasks

#112

Post by sanderjd »

RandomLensman wrote: post #102
sanderjd wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. But actually, I kind of feel like people who have had training to get good at planning, are not the most likely people to be good at avoiding "overplanning". I think it's the same kind of incentives as how dentists have a natural bias toward recommending dental work, or chiropractors toward recommending adjustments, or programmers toward recommending writing software, or anyone toward doing a bit more of what…

I think that happens typically when the planning and the execution are very divorced (someone good at/selling using the techniques of planning). I'd say a good operational planer doesn't overplan.

I agree, but I guess the point I was trying to make is that I think everybody is susceptible to over-biasing toward thinking the thing they know how to do is super important, to the point that they sometimes over-do it, despite their best intentions.

I would say that "a good programmer doesn't write more software than is necessary", but despite my best intentions, I'm certain that I write more software than is necessary, because writing software is my hammer and lots of things look like nails to me.

I think it requires more than just being "good" at something to overcome this tendency. I'm sure the very best operational planners, like the very best software engineers, consistently strike the perfect balance, but I suspect most "good" planners, like most "good" (even "great") software engineers I know, still struggle with this tendency.

Re: Breaking down tasks

#113

Post by chrisweekly »

mlrtime wrote: post #65
chrisweekly wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent: I can't recall where I first heard "plans are worthless, but planning is essential", but there's definitely some truth in it.

Certainly holds true for having a baby. You can plan all you want and it is essential... however you'll quickly find out that most of your plans are in your newborns' hands.

Yes! Also Mike Tyson's famous "Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face."

Re: Breaking down tasks

#114

Post by madcaptenor »

chrisweekly wrote: post #113
mlrtime wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly holds true for having a baby. You can plan all you want and it is essential... however you'll quickly find out that most of your plans are in your newborns' hands.

Yes! Also Mike Tyson's famous "Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face."

For babies, everybody has a plan until they get pooped on / thrown up on.

Re: Breaking down tasks

#115

Post by rapind »

sanderjd wrote: post #98
M2Ys4U wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes planning is more important than having a plan

I see this a lot in this thread (and have heard it a number of times before), and it sounds intuitively right to me, but could you give an example of when and why that is the case?

Writing an idea down just seems to reinforce it and makes you flesh it out. I think it engages your brain differently, but I’m no neuroscientist.

Re: Breaking down tasks

#117

Post by sanderjd »

rapind wrote: post #115
sanderjd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this a lot in this thread (and have heard it a number of times before), and it sounds intuitively right to me, but could you give an example of when and why that is the case?

Writing an idea down just seems to reinforce it and makes you flesh it out. I think it engages your brain differently, but I’m no neuroscientist.

Even if this is right (and I definitely think there is a lot of truth to it!), planning is not the only kind of "writing down ideas to reinforce and flesh them out" activity. Is it the most valuable one? And is this the only and best way to reinforce and flesh out ideas, or are there other ways that might be even better, like creating prototypes or just actively fiddling around with different approaches and possibilities? In my view, it isn't that there is no value in pondering the detailed sequence of work it will require to accomplish something over the next three months, it's more that I think beyond a horizon of a few weeks, most of the other things I could be doing with that time usually ends up seeming more valuable, to me.

Re: Breaking down tasks

#118

Post by sanderjd »

nate wrote: post #106
sanderjd wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have come to think of this as "The Anna Principle" in organizing my own work: > when faced with uncertainty, one must simply focus on doing "The Next Right Thing." [0] This is not to trivialize it! Figuring out the next right thing to do is hard, but also the most valuable part of planning, in my view. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_Right_Thing#Synopsis

OMG, I love that you put Frozen 2 and princess Anna and a song onto this. Thank you for this coinage. I will absolutely be using this now. Please write a blog post on your coinage of this so that we all here can link to that and give you some credit. I'm serious. I looked up The Anna Principle and I wanted to see your blog on this.

:) Alas, I do not blog.
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