Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems
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Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems
#2I have to agree. My personal experience suggests if you want to get good at something, keep doing lots of it and aim for speed rather than perfection. You'll end up being speedy and get closer to perfection, than if you just try for perfection.
But one good counter example does come to mind - designing a database schema.
I'm trying to wrestle with what the difference might be. I think Markov processes, e.g. processes where the future state depends on a prior state, are relevant.
Maybe we could say tasks are either "strongly Markvoian", that is, how well we do them now will influence our future work and hence we should really think them through, e.g. designing a schema. Weakly Markovian, in which case there may be some future impact but not much, and so we exercise caution but "done is better than perfect". And finally non-Markovian - e.g. throwing out the garbage, cooking dinner, most emails - getting the thing done is simply a pass/fail and so we just have to do it, quality is relatively unimportant.
I think what I'm saying is, most tasks will be weakly or non-markovian, so we should "move fast and break things", but every now and then there'll be something we need to do that is strongly markovian. For such things we should be prepared to take a step back and give ourselves a little extra time, so things don't blow up further down the track.
Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems
#3Working quickly is important because it's the better method to survive and thrive. Quickly producing 100 deliverables with qualities ranging from shit to pretty good, will probably on average always defeat carefully crafting one deliverable in the same time frame.
Speed lets you try many alternatives, experiment with many different even opposite options, and draw out creativeness.
Another possible reason is that speed is the strength of the younger generations. In human history, if new comers want to beat the current authority (in business or politics) who have already mastered the intricacies of the current game, one have to propose and experiment large quantity of new alternatives, new rules of new games, even though most of experiments might have low quality results judging by the established rules. But it's the better way to compete and survive.
Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems
#4High speed alone is not so good if it comes without quality.
Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems
#5High speed alone is not so good if it comes without quality.
That's the catch, isn't it? You probably want to get high quality fast, but you can't get fast without losing quality, at least in the beginning. But I'm pretty sure speed trumps quality in most cases - having a good enough product out is eons better than having a perfect product years away...
Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems
#6not so long ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9952875
Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems
#7High speed alone is not so good if it comes without quality.
That's the catch, isn't it? You probably want to get high quality fast, but you can't get fast without losing quality, at least in the beginning. But I'm pretty sure speed trumps quality in most cases - having a good enough product out is eons better than having a perfect product years away...
See: Worse is Better vs Worse is Worse.
Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems
#8I believe the author has mistaken speed with efficiency. What's the benefit of being fast if you're sloppy and have to redo things often?
Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems
#9I have to agree. My personal experience suggests if you want to get good at something, keep doing lots of it and aim for speed rather than perfection. You'll end up being speedy and get closer to perfection, than if you just try for perfection. But one good counter example does come to mind - designing a database schema. I'm trying to wrestle with what the difference might be. I think Markov processes, e.g. processes…
It depends on your goal. Even with database schemas, iterating quickly optimizes for learning and skill improving.
Aiming for quality tries to optimizes for creating a quality product faster. Still, taking some time for skill honing might be better than trying to design the perfect system on your first try.
I'd say it depends on your current skill level rather than on a task property like "strongly Markovian". Learning has diminishing returns. At some point more learning is not worth it anymore.
Re: Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems
#10Yes and no.
Do things fast when the cost of doing them wrong is low. If you're learning something, or doing something with low risk, then doing it as fast as possible is a really good idea (for all the reasons set out in the article).
But...
Do things slowly if the cost of getting it wrong is so high that you'll have no opportunity to try again. For example, don't pack a parachute quickly.
The key is recognising that there's more than one way to approach soemthing; selecting the right method for the problem at hand is the winning strategy.