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This made me think of science and academia. One of the things that seems to distinguish productive people in science is the balance between “doer” mentality and “thinker” mentality. Too much “thinker” mentality and the project never goes anywhere. Too much “doer” mentally and the project moves but may go down an unproductive path. Perhaps an analogy is that “thinker” and “doer” mentalities work together like a stocha…
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"A person who faces many choices, really has one
Out of indecision and confusion, they choose to have none"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. How long did it usually take you to ship stuff vs your coworkers? And now are you on par or even faster?
I no longer work at AWS but the lesson has stuck with me. Whenever I start to feel that I'm starting to overthink, I quickly break the cycle and ship whatever I have.
It’s important that the first release be extremely high Quality. I’m not a fan of lash-up MVPs.
I work very quickly, and do good work.
I just did that with the 2.0 version of one of my apps. I released 2.0 a couple weeks ago, and it’s at 2.1.4 (I think). I test, and solicit feedback. One of the releases covered feedback on the App Store.
It stops, after a few tweaks.
> I've also noticed that, up to a certain point, the smarter a person is, the more it has to be apparent in their work. Every algorithm needs to be perfect, every function needs to be side-effects free, every data structure needs to be the fastest, and every best practice needs to be followed. Many engineers are somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum, as Temple Grandin tells her Googler audience in [1]. Overthinking is…
Discovering you have a mental disorder puts motivational and organisational think pieces in a very different light.
Amazon has an internal tool called "Forte", a tool used once a year for employees to provide "anonymous" feedback for one another. One piece of feedback that cropped up multiple times for me, from multiple people, was that I could improve in "bias for action", akin to analysis paralysis mentioned in the article. At first, I got a bit defensive ... and in response, I ended up running an experiment, delivering code & w…
> I've also noticed that, up to a certain point, the smarter a person is, the more it has to be apparent in their work. Every algorithm needs to be perfect, every function needs to be side-effects free, every data structure needs to be the fastest, and every best practice needs to be followed. Many engineers are somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum, as Temple Grandin tells her Googler audience in [1]. Overthinking is…
Would love to see a link to solid data of what this means. Is it 20% vs. 2% kind of thing if you filter for just engineers vs. general population?
This made me think of science and academia. One of the things that seems to distinguish productive people in science is the balance between “doer” mentality and “thinker” mentality. Too much “thinker” mentality and the project never goes anywhere. Too much “doer” mentally and the project moves but may go down an unproductive path. Perhaps an analogy is that “thinker” and “doer” mentalities work together like a stocha…
Damn dude, having seen anything this insightful since that last Malcolm Gladwell book. Thanks!
Amazon has an internal tool called "Forte", a tool used once a year for employees to provide "anonymous" feedback for one another. One piece of feedback that cropped up multiple times for me, from multiple people, was that I could improve in "bias for action", akin to analysis paralysis mentioned in the article. At first, I got a bit defensive ... and in response, I ended up running an experiment, delivering code & w…
Speaking from my experience in writing docs fast vs slow, the peers probably noticed the drop in quality, but as a positive on team-work.
Getting a document out before it is set in stone has helped bring in leadership early and have their hand in guiding your document (for better or worse). This has a diffusion of credit in general, but a document with many inputs and one editor has worked out better than a document which is written alone and only enters the debate as a "product".
Giving other people the opportunity to influence your opinion before you've made up your mind is a bit of a leap - but it is better for the group than the individual.
> I've also noticed that, up to a certain point, the smarter a person is, the more it has to be apparent in their work. Every algorithm needs to be perfect, every function needs to be side-effects free, every data structure needs to be the fastest, and every best practice needs to be followed. Many engineers are somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum, as Temple Grandin tells her Googler audience in [1]. Overthinking is…