andygates

What works best for me is to do it (whatever it is) as quickly as possible, and with no more planning than necessary. You need some, but spending too much of the project's juice on the planning leaves less of it for the doing.

Doesn't stop me having a thousand unfinished projects, of course, but I do finish some of them.

This may the state to be aiming for:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flow-Psychology-Optimal-Experience-P-S/dp/0061339202/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1292798263&sr=8-2

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Flow and JFDI work -- until I have to break for sleep or day-job, then while I'm breaking, I get to thinking.

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ladyjulian.livejournal.com

My head works much like your head. I find a lot of the excitement of doing things is in planning them. By the time it gets to doing them, they're old news and ICBA any more. With training, I can add a (n un)healthy dollop of fear-of-failure to the mixture - if I don't go to the pool / to the park I won't have to deal with not measuring up to my own expectations.

Although I can manage to do stuff *for other people.* If I think about baking a cake, I probably won't do it. But if I think "I'll surprise C with a cake," I probably will. I've had a writing project fully thought out but not much in the way of pen-to-paper for aeons - but if someone else asks me to do a piece for them, it'll be with them that afternoon.

Also deadlines. Deadlines work.

Think-meat is peculiar stuff.

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the-s-guy.livejournal.com

Thirded. I have to-do lists which have outstanding items from months back, if not years.

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I have to-do wikis that don't work in modern browsers...

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Deadlines are great focusing tools. They work for me and tri. Maybe some of the planning should include planning chunk deadlines?

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kimble.livejournal.com

Hmm, I can relate to that. I enjoy planning things for planning's sake, which I generally consider fine and healthy because it never hurts to have a good plan. But when it comes to motivation for projects, while I'm reasonably good at getting started, I tend to run out somewhere around the point where I've demonstrated to myself, to within a reasonable degree of certainty, that something is achievable.

That's probably a classic engineer trait, isn't it? I'm all about proving that you can do something, while living in a mess of incomplete projects that never quite get all the bugs worked out (because I've got a good idea of how to do that, which makes it no longer interesting). If there's an external reason to complete something, I'm quite capable of doing so, but it seems that the vast majority of my satisfaction comes from working out *how* to solve problems rather than actually getting off my arse and solving them.

Sadly, I work best in fire-fighting mode. If things go wrong, I'll happily work my arse off to restore the zero state, but that's not a particularly healthy way to do anything.

Back to the M&Ms thing, the idea that keeping things unplanned - or perhaps undefined - to make them more completable has merit. Ironically because there isn't a 'complete' state to aim for (or be satisfied with a most-of-the-way-there approximation of). I can kind of see how that works for straightforward stuff that doesn't involve any planning, anyway. I'd think about it some more, but then I'd never get round to testing the idea...

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"I tend to run out somewhere around the point where I've demonstrated to myself, to within a reasonable degree of certainty, that something is achievable."

This!

Once the proof of concept is proved, the continuation to product is boring. To my right at the moment, chainmail-backed gloves. Well, one glove, and one that I haven't fitted together because I KNOW IT'LL WORK ITS A CHORE!

But it's not an evil chore, it's a cool chore, so why am I ... almost resenting its choriness? I think the only chore I didn't resent, apart from making miscellaneous hot beverages, was chopping firewood.

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fox-uk.livejournal.com

I carry a mental image of my particular variety of the universe around in my head. Then, if I want something to change in that universe I work out how that reality will look after the change and visualise the changes that are necessary for the new reality to become existent.

Of course, problems arise when something comes along that either does not fit into my current universe map or would prove impossible to create as the required changes to my existing universe model would prove too problematic for whatever reason. In such situations I tend to strop out a tad, or just become belligerently inflexible. And because explaining my reasoning would require an explanation as to how an entire universe map doesn't work with whatever the thingummy is that causes the issue, it's pretty damned difficult/depressingly horrible to try to make others understand what's causing the issues.

Come to think of it, this does sound like semi- to fully-autistic behaviour. Try putting an autistic person into a situation which is outside of their understanding of how things *SHOULD* be and you can expect a major tantrum. OK, I don't melt down quite like that but same sort of thing. Any of my past actions make more sense now?

But to answer your question, sometimes the act of visualising an event and altering my universe view is all that I need to assume that the change is now a physical reality as well. So yes, it can be difficult to make that reality fully manifest and so things don't necessarily get finished when I can see the end is in sight. And if you think I will repeat something I have already done (like type this post out again once Firefox crashes) you can completely forget it!

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How does that work on, say, building a boat?

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fox-uk.livejournal.com

1. Plan how to build boat
2. Work out where to get materials
3. Work out where to get manpower
4. Work out how to finance the operation
5. Design boat
6. So we have all resources, manpower, finances and locations available to build the boat. Oh look, a butterfly! *wanders off*

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The butterfly phase is the deadly one.

I have a wiki on my keyring memory stick. It has a section called "crackpot projects". You have to scroll to see the whole listing. I have no section called "completed projects".

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It just occurred to me that there's another effect at work in my case, and I think it is a bigger cause of procrastination on projects than the M&M one.

It's to do with the ways in which a project is daunting, and the way that changes through the thing's lifecycle. Or, to put it another way, it's about how my confidence in the project (or my fear of failure) changes through the lifecycle.

When I'm planning it, and making the initial lists, I'm very confident.

When I buy the supplies, I'm very confident.

Just before I start doing the actual work, I am often daunted by the thing, and the prospect of failure (and the consequent threat to my self-esteem) seems very real. It seems like a lot of *work*, and makes me feel tired.

But, as soon as I have my hands on the work and I'm doing it, all that goes away, and I just noodle on.

I don't entirely understand it, but I think this cryptic arithmetic of self-esteem is the thing to get to grips with.

The reason that a deadline helps is that it supplies a counterbalancing prospect of failure at that getting-started stage (as long as I've made some public commitment to that deadline). And there's a very similar effect with projects that are collaborative, or are to help out someone else. The prospect of failing to deliver as promised balances the prospect of failing during the making. Though I still never start till the last possible minute.

The other thing that helps, with making-style projects, is the habit of starting off with test-pieces. Making a little test-piece can't possible doom the project (so is not subject to prevarication), and it's a comfortable way into the flow of the making.

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"First cut" paralysis is sometimes a factor, but I'm old enough and have done enough to push over it. Indeed, rescuing a first-cut screwup can energize a project sometimes.

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For me, I don't think it's about the first cut going wrong.

It's more that the beginning of the implementation is the first point at which one is really committed to
(a) actually doing all the work
(b) the risk of failure and maybe
(c) the risk that the finished thing will not be a shiny as the planned thing, and hence the ruination of a currently-shiny vision.

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A kicks in with large physically dull tasks: painting a wall is fun but all four? Maaaan.

B, less so, because I generally have a good story to accompany the failure. If I haven't set myself on fire, it's a bad make. The kayak's draft name is "Dunning-Kruger"...

C is close: it invites another round of plan-refining. Is this really the best plan? What if I skip some doing-time and revise it?

In "make" projects, this is just stalling. In fitness and gardening projects, it's lost opportunity, because we're not static things.

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In a sideways way, it is also a lost opportunity in make projects, because both stalling and scope creep burn up more of the project's initial juice, and that means it's more likely to stay on the shelf forever.

My slogan of the moment is 'The worst thing that might possibly work', which I attempt to deploy as an antidote to the endless refining.

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ravenbait.livejournal.com

Oh boy. You weren't expecting a sensible, sane answer from me, were you? Because y'ain't gettin' one.

"The pixies make me do it, surrrr."

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You get a pass for this one, space cadet. :-*

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tyrshundr.livejournal.com

I start with an idea of what I want (e.g. support structure for slim branches on an apple tree) then come up with a rough idea (horizontal bamboo canes lashed to an upright) and apply it to the problem. If this does not create a functional situation (e.g. the vertical/horizontal frame twists at the crossing points) then I repeat from the new starting point (diagonal brace to harness TRIANGLE POWER.... ONLY $29.99 PLUS SHIPPING AND TAXES!!!!!!).

This prevents me over-analysing as I can start work before I know the whole plan because I know I am going to plan more later if necessary.

I discovered a few years ago that this is actually quite similar to LEAN/Agile theory.

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But it's risky for life support scenarios, neh? You wouldn't build a boat that way, you'd drown. When the point of failure is a position of risk, planning comes first. And if there's no risk, the project isn't interesting...

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tyrshundr.livejournal.com

If you are proposing a situation in which you build a perfect boat without testing then I might drown; however, if you cannot test then your dilemma is more likely to be drown whilst not doing anything or attempt something, and even a sinking boat is better than no boat.

Your question related to how people avoid over-analysis and for me the best solution found to date is starting to actually apply a solution to a problem to see what happens; for an situation where I have time but need to succeed with the first solution then wrap I would put the iterations into testing instead of deployment.

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I see the iterations, at least on a larger scale. For example, I got a boat to have an activity while my knee healed. But I see the limitations of that boat, and want another boat that doesn't have them.

Since I know little about boat designs, I'm using someone else's plans, tried and tested in cute photos of beardy mountain men rolling them among icebergs. So the iterative stages don't apply: this is purely a "build".

Hmm. I'm blogging instead of sketching out those separator offsets...

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self-discipline :)

(and to help that, a bigger mortgage)

Probs is, you got it too easy m' man; you've become the stereotypical Gen-X'er. Real work is too hard and imagination is too shortterm; result instant gratification (aka The Masturbation Culture).

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You're suggesting I should buy a bigger rod for my back, so that I may reap the satisfaction of paying it off? That's... bizarre. And it's to do with money, which just doesn't interest me one whit.

See, "self-discipline" is the black box. I'm enquiring about what's going on inside that box. Don't forget, most of these projects are, by definition, masturbation: they're all leisure, not life-or-death.

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Ahh that's the thing "money" (like sex and air) is only important when you're not getting enough.

Once you've got the survival thing out of the way, old Maslows pyramid cuts in, and since you're not likely to catch religion it doesn't leave much basic drives left.

So that's what the mortgage thing is about, not the money, but putting the "survival" back on the table, it's about not eating 2 minute noodles for the rest of your life while living out of a cardboard box. A similar thing can be done by getting an expensive SigOther.

Inside the box, IMO, is the prioritisor-er. (and it's wot breaks if one does the guru reject the material world bit) - hence the Maslow-link between prioritisor-er and spiritualism/religion.

Ssince you don't have want big money/silly toys/expensive girlfriend/wank car; you're now standing at the edge of today's narrow Western cultural identity. Beyond this there are dragons (which is one reason normal types don't want to know there is even an edge (hence their blinkers)

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Ooookay, I'm not sure we're even talking about the same stuff. I'm seeking flibbertybigget focus, and you're damning me to some hypothetical GenX abyss.

What you're saying is that peril makes a man of me. Well, shit, why didn't you just send me off to war? How's your take on the Hemingway question?

It's a Dirk Gently leap to connect the two, really.

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In reverse order to your comments:
If it was an answer that fit into your normal calculations, then you could visualise the problem and thus see it's answer as you can the order tasks. Consider it in the manner of the Plato's Allegory of the Cave.
If you could recognise the process from your PoV you could see the answer.

Much of what plagues the infamous "GenX" symptoms... and I'm not slapping a label on you; you've known me longer than that. It's a bunch of signs and manifestations which have some common causes. ...which if looked at objectively have some common mental and psychological causes.

To quote a friend. If you lift a very heavy weight (eg in weight lifting) you must be focussed in the moment. Can one acheive the same thing by mentally visualising the same process?
What are the simulaities/differences?

In the modern information world, what room is there for "reality"? What value is there beyond what individuals arbitarily assign? And through what processes do they use to assign these things?

After all, many folks would think running or weightwork or pennyfarthings are not worth focussing on. What is it that makes these things worth the effort to start with?

It does also become difficult as you are very intelligent and know it, yet in it's own way this can be blinkers that are closing you into your own linear world, as you measure and judge. BTW the process is age dependent :) and well documented. Just not in modernly scientific acceptable ways (I first came across it numerology, although it is hinted at in the full Myers Briggs reports, where the focus priorities change due to experience and age)

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Anyway, one the gen-X solutions to existential ennui has always been extreme sports. Put your corpus in peril and all that wank about trophy wives and hungry bankers is very, very trivial by comparison. Survival is very much on the table, and the focus and flow I get in those situations is very real and very cherished. It just ain't relevant to project stuff.

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