How to do anything

by terkalate • 13 years ago

128 47 13 years ago

eterpstra2• 13 years ago

I'm sorry, but this is one of the most link-baitish titles to a blog post I've seen in a while. It's a nice little chunk of wisdom about problem-solving and motivation, but it's certainly not showing me how to do 'anything'. The problem of me not being the starting quarterback for the Patriots is not going to be solved by following this advice, sadly.

sharkweek• 13 years ago

Jaguars, maybe!

mikeg8• 13 years ago

haha snap!

hello_newman2• 13 years ago

It does teach you how to do anything. Just break down the problem. One stepping stone leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another and so on. A journey (anywhere, metaphorically speaking) is just a collection of individual stepping stones and accomplishments.

This may be too simplistic, but lets take your quarterback problem. Let's assume you are able bodied, in shape, in high school (gotta start then if you want to make it to the pros) and made the football team.

1. You made the team 2. You become back up quarter back 3. Work your ass off at training to become starting QB or at least when he goes down you get a chance to show why you should be starting. 4. You become starting QB 5. You work your ass off to make plays, win games, and become recognized not only as a great QB but also as a great leader, because the QB is the leader of the team. 6. Get accepted into a recognized college and repeat the above.

All you have to do is follow the guidelines set by yourself, fill in the blanks, and repeat. I do not mean to go on a tangent, but the point I am trying to convey is everything you want to accomplish in life can be done if you bust your ass once someone somewhere gives you a chance to do so.

eterpstra2• 13 years ago

It's not too simplistic, you hit the nail on the head. My knee-jerk reaction to this post was to roll my eyes (mainly because of the title), because it seems like the OP is just stating the obvious - you have a lofty goal, and you reach that goal by breaking it down into bite size problems that you know how to solve.

It's easy to forget, though, that my job as a software developer is to solve small problems all day in order to tackle a larger problem, and that not everyone has this day-to-day experience. So outside of our tribe, this article may not be as 'common sensical' as I first presumed.

beachstartup• 13 years ago

> The problem of me not being the starting quarterback for the Patriots is not going to be solved by following this advice, sadly

i think the point is to apply it to things you know you can accomplish but don't know how or feel overwhelmed by.

flying to pluto is also impossible, let's not use this as a counterexample as to why you shouldn't start a company or change your car's alternator or build a bookshelf.

nsomaru• 13 years ago

(tongue-in-cheek) maybe you should try cricket?

marknutter• 13 years ago

You don't think Tom Brady broke his task of becoming the current starting QB for the Patriots down into smaller, more manageable tasks? Given enough time and dedication, even something as seemingly ridiculous as wanting to become a starting QB for an NFL team is possible (read "not probable").

ivankirigin• 13 years ago

Many people should apply this to their work. But I think it also applies to life goals. Too often people don't reflect about what they really want and how they might find a path to get there.

hello_newman2• 13 years ago

I have said it before, but I love SVBTLE. That being said, this was another great article. It just repeats what has been told to you since you have been in elementary school; break down the problem.

Breaking down problems, step by step, into smaller digestible pieces allows self confidence when you can check on task off a list. It allows you to tackle one facet of the problem and stack layers of knowledge. I think the problem with most things is "paralysis by analysis"; you see a problem, say a start up idea, that you want to do but you have no idea how. You get too involved in the minutia of things and become paralyzed before you ever start.

Another great line: "I recall a disagreement I had with a friend many years ago. My claim was that anything I set my mind to was achievable; he thought this idea was ridiculous"

Not only is this a great line, because you REALLY can accomplish anything you set your mind to, but it is also a fundamentally different way to look at the world. You see obstacles for what they are; obstacles. You don't see them as a reason why you can't do something.

The more obstacles in your way, the more reason why you have found something worth your time doing. Obstacles let you know what you're doing is important, worthwhile, and because it has obstacles you have already beat at least 50% of the people out there because they will likely give up when presented with a challenge that they do not know how to solve.

Great article.

abstractbill• 13 years ago

Yes, this works [1]. Much harder questions are what to do, and who to do it with.

[1]: The only difficulty is when you encounter a combinatorial explosion of potential solutions. It will work eventually, but it might take too long.

phil• 13 years ago

  1. Learn about what's going on in the world.
  2. Make a list of the most interesting things you might want to change...

devindotcom• 13 years ago

I have to say, these "footnotes" are getting out of hand. That was just another sentence, not a link or citation. Or are we doing this ironically?

mmanfrin• 13 years ago

I'd love to see a todo app that was not the same linear list of things, but a tree of subtasks. I input one thing, then it asks me "Can you break this down in to subtasks?". To which I type in subtasks, then it continues to ask me for each iteration until I can break it down no more. Then, it presents a list with the smallest-unit item first.

seancron• 13 years ago

I think the closest I've seen to something like that is https://workflowy.com/ or Emacs' Org mode

cgag• 13 years ago

You might like workflowy (https://workflowy.com/).

jacalata• 13 years ago

There are a lot of tree/subtask todo apps, although I don't know of one exactly like you listed. Perhaps try Nozbe? http://www.nozbe.com/tour/

justin2• 13 years ago

I use Workflowy exactly for this purpose, to reflect in data the mental process I was talking about in the original post.

pytrin• 13 years ago

Not exactly a todo list, but what about Leanspecs? https://www.leanspecs.com

aheilbut• 13 years ago

http://checkvist.com is great for this.

daeken• 13 years ago

I've been using Checkvist for everything task-wise for years; can't recommend it highly enough. The API is also super easy to use, if you want to integrate it into your dashboard and such.

derekp7• 13 years ago

My only problem with this type of workflow (and the list workflow also) is that often sibling, parent, and child tasks aren't apparent until you are in the middle of, or complete other tasks. So at most I could get a start on a task list/tree, but it wouldn't come close to reflecting reality until the project is completely done. Also, many sub tasks are easier to just do than to describe, yet they don't group together that well under a general parent task.

Of course if a tool could keep track of changes as the project progresses (along with a change log of reasons for each task add/removal), then it could be a good resource improve your estimation skills.

lbk• 13 years ago

If you're looking for a desktop application , try Abstractspoon ToDoList : http://www.abstractspoon.com/ .

It's very configurable and works well with Dropbox .

th0ma5• 13 years ago

I made a silly thing that sort of does this https://listdoboss.appspot.com/

gnosis• 13 years ago

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."

Mark Twain

era86• 13 years ago

really love this quote!

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

That is an awesome quote. Probably not Twain though :-)

And while you really can't necessarily achieve anything this way, you can make progress. So if you decide to say mine minerals on the moon, you can start making progress toward that but it may be that you never do find a ride up and back.

ced• 13 years ago

It's like trying to reach the moon by climbing a tree - one can report steady progress, all the way to the top of the tree! Dreyfus

kamaal3• 13 years ago

>>So if you decide to say mine minerals on the moon, you can start making progress toward that but it may be that you never do find a ride up and back.

No that is not how you apply this quote, to going to the moon. If wish to go to the moon, you break down the tasks of going there and coming back into smaller pieces and execute smaller set of tasks.

phillco• 13 years ago

I like this one (discovered via Civilization):

"Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs." - Henry Ford

maxwin• 13 years ago

Divide and Conquer

femto• 13 years ago

Playing devils advocate, sometimes it is the "breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks" that is the hardest thing to get started.

nate• 13 years ago

I think one of the key things Justin is doing while he's making this list is that just keeps asking, "How can I do this?" Turning all these tasks into questions of how, is a powerful short-circuit in your brain to get you to stop saying, "I can't do this."

Daniel Pink's latest book To Sell is Human helped brings up another interesting aspect of this. He highlights a study in the book where people were able to get more things, I believe it was puzzles, accomplished when they got themselves into a questioning mindset.

cryptozeus• 13 years ago

This we here time to time from these successful people. Is it safe to assume that, justin carries around a notebook with 100s of small tasks and executes them one by one ? I always wonder if these people talk about breaking tasks as small as possible then what kind of system do they use ? I can not imagine using todolist app or something like evernote for this kind of huge projects.

justin2• 13 years ago

Generally by the time you are working on a truly giant project, you are using project management software to coordinate all the minor todos of each individual (and you have already gone through the process of breaking the larger tasks down into bite-sized pieces). This post was more a reflection of how I tackle initial, seemingly insurmountable problems at the individual level.

In order to manage this personally, I use Workflowy (http://workflowy.com), which is a good semantic representation of nested to-do lists, which is essentially what you are creating for this process. Yes, my Workflowy contains hundreds of small tasks. They aren't necessarily executed in order.

Glyptodon• 13 years ago

It seems more correct to say: "You may achieve anything you set your mind to" rather than: "You can achieve anything you set your mind to."

Many people have set their mind to things and failed. Many have done so and succeeded.

Either case is clearly better than being overwhelmed into motionless atrophy.

andrewljohnson• 13 years ago

This sort of journey leads to true invention. In seeking to build something you don't understand as a whole, you must explore the underlying components. And when you find the bit you need that hasn't been built yet, boom! Invention!

I think building a (successful) start-up is a lot like getting a PhD. You make a bump on the circle at some point: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

bmelton• 13 years ago

Moreover, this is how most 'puzzle' based interviews are done.

I've said this before, and I don't think it's any big secret, but the silly questions you hear in interviews almost never care about getting the right answer, but test to see if you can work a process to at least get to a plausibly believable answer. Or at least that's what I've always looked for when interviewing.

I remember asking a guy "How many jellybeans can you fit into a school bus?", and he started working the problem out. He guessed at the dimensions of a jelly bean, then asked me something about how many cubic feet are in the interior of a school bus, then began working out the problem mathematically.

This was exactly the right process, at least by my estimation, though there were other really interesting ways people approached the problem. A surprisingly large number of people just said "I don't know", without bothering to go any further, and one guy even got mad at us being one of those "stupid puzzle shops" and left in a hurry.

The reason I remember the one guy though, was because at the end, he asked me something like "I think the answer is such and such, with an approximate margin of error of 10% or so. How close am I?" When I confessed that I had no idea what the answer was, and that I was really just looking to see how he came up with the process, he laughed louder than I've ever heard anyone laugh ever before. I told him his guess was likely closer than anything I might have come up with on my own, and we eventually hired him and he proved to be great.

The skills necessary for good problem solving are myriad, but at least to me (and apparently Justin Kan), it starts with breaking problems down into bite-sized chunks. Another big thing for me (that I didn't see in the article) is in asking questions for things you don't know. Nobody knows everything, and I've found that the best engineers I've worked with have always been pretty systematic about clarifying things they weren't clear on. That's huge too. If you need to know whether we're talking short bus, field trip bus or regular old school bus, ask. An answer for one is probably not the answer for another.

kamaal3• 13 years ago

>>Moreover, this is how most 'puzzle' based interviews are done.

Correction.

This is how most puzzle based interviews are supposed to be done, but aren't.

aviswanathan• 13 years ago

Ignorance is bliss. I think by not knowing (and intentionally ignoring) how difficult something appears to be, it's easier and manageable to tackle it step-by-step. With that frame of mind, small steps are accomplishments, and you're motivated to continue as opposed to continually thinking about the overall goal and how many steps are required to get there.

yarou• 13 years ago

So...essentially object oriented programming for your life (divide and conquer) :)

plinkplonk2• 13 years ago

"I recall a disagreement I had with a friend many years ago. My claim was that anything I set my mind to was achievable; he thought this idea was ridiculous."

You can do anything you set your mind to if you have infinite time (and money/other resources). As a thought experiment if you are an immortal billionaire with perfect health, you can do anything you want.

Fitting a plan (to successfully complete audacious goals) into a context of limited resources is the real challenge. This is why startups talk of 'runways' and scrounge for funding.

(that said, breaking things down into smaller steps is useful)

zoba• 13 years ago

Sounds like the theory behind http://waypoint.fm

Basically, everything is doable if its broken down into small chunks. The methods for stuff that people have already done should be shared.

kamaal3• 13 years ago

For those who already don't know about this, GTD is the best place to start on anything related this. Also start watching various talks by David Allen to get a total perspective of how this works.

And for those who want a quick heads up. Continue reading...

The crux of the issue is that the human brain is not good at storing thing like lists, or lists of lists or lists of lists of lists .. ad infinitum. The problem gets more complicated when you to manage these list structures in your brain. Its very difficult to do this to-do, done, priority and triaging etc activities in your brain itself. Chances are that, if you put all that stuff in your head you will- Either forget most of them and focus what you brain thinks is the highest priority(which most of the times disastrously ends up in a task called 'procrastination') or that your mind will spend great deals of time, energy and psychic resources to maintain those list structures. The net result is much resources are spent maintaining that list structures than executing them. This is when you get that overwhelming feeling of 'I am stressed' or 'There are too many things to do, I cant take it anymore' emotions.

What is the result?- you either mess up real badly forgetting things or get overwhelmed and give up.

There are a few exceptions to these cases. During the times of crisis/interesting-situations your brain does a superb job of prioritizing things and putting all the focus on one most important task at hand. This is the reason why when your life is in danger or when you start work on a very interesting project you brain automagically tells you to do tasks X, Y and Z without even you consciously knowing about it. A few more exceptions to this are moments of 'Flow', when you are in a moment of 'Flow'[1], when you experience flow you will not need a list set up to help you out. But you will need GTD to get into 'Flow'[2].

To summarize it all:

    1. Your brain needs a purge from time to time.
    2. You need some way of maintaining task state outside
    your brain. My advice is use a diary and pen/pencils.
    3. You need to visualize things. Not just your schedule.
    I mean everything. Even if its a simple program you are
    writing, put it down on a paper first. Visualize it.
    4. I repeat. Purge your brain. Put things down on paper
    first.
    5. Make plans, break them down and execute.
    6. Pick interesting projects. Helps in getting into
    'Flow'.
    7. REVIEW THE PROGRESS OF YOUR PLANS(without this its 
    all useless)
    8. Ponder on the 'Next task' for every task you do.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29 [2] The book by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi is a nice place to start on this.

fxthea2• 13 years ago

This idea combined with the learnings from the Art of War are a great way to get things done. The key to the Art of War is that it teaches you to recognize "Resistance" which often manifests itself in the form of procrastination, but not just any procrastination, procrastination that makes you think you are actually making progress.

plinkplonk2• 13 years ago

"The key to the Art of War is that it teaches you to recognize "Resistance""

you mean "The War of Art" (by Pressfield) not the "Art of War" (by Sun Tzu)

fxthea2• 13 years ago

Whoops yeah I mean War of Art.

How to do anything

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