7 ms·

When it comes to efficiency/effectiveness, I prefer to focus on "Do" instead of "Don't". Richard Hamming (from "You and Your Research"): 1. What are the mos

by edw519 15y ago

When it comes to efficiency/effectiveness, I prefer to focus on "Do" instead of "Don't". Richard Hamming (from "You and Your Research"): 1. What are the most important problems in your field? 2. Are you working on one of them? 3. Why not? http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html Paul Graham's (from "Good and Bad Procrastination") generalization of Richard Hamming: What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you? http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html edw519's generalization of Paul Graham: Work on the most important thing until it's not the most important thing any more. I have developed this excellent/horrible habit of not being able to focus on very much of anything if there was something more important hanging over my head. Excellent in keeping me from trivial pursuits. Horrible at meal time, bed time, other people time. I'm still a work in progress.

balsam 15y ago
One thing I've always wanted to ask PG is: does he think that helping smart people to get rich flipping companies (usually not by doing the "coolest thing") is cooler than making a great Lisp? One answer to why not, is: "No money".
- noahc 15y ago
  The really cool thing about money is that it makes an excellent points system. It's neat that you can trade green paper for physical things, but more importantly money is a way to keep score to two decimal places. Often times when people talk about money they are talking about resource gathering. At some point the resource gathering turns off and the money becomes an easy proxy for points. So I'm not sure that creating another Lisp is less cool, but it can't be easily measured. What if IBM uses your Lisp for everything they do, how does that compare to another guys Lisp that has 6.5 million downloads. Who is cooler?
  - balsam 15y ago
    One might define a meritocracy as one in which the coolness signalling aspect of money is no different from the resource gathering aspect. You also raise the interesting point about the granularity of money: if IBM makes more money than the Lisper for her Lisp, does that make IBM cooler? It could.
    - noahc 15y ago
      I think you can see this in real world. Look at Linus or David of 37 Signals. They have created at least millions if not billions of dollars worth of value (uncollected). As a quick experiment with my girlfriend: Do you know who Linus is? => Uh, No. Do you know what Linux is? => Yeah, it's your system. Do you know what IBM is? => Yes, it's a computer company. It's pretty clear to me that outside of our nerd/geek bubble at the society level those that make more money are cooler.
      - kamaal 15y ago
        Talking about 'How much someone is rich' without talking about 'How someone became rich' is so plainly wrong. You have to work in order to make money. And to make a lot of money you need to work a lot, or at least harder. To do that you need to know how to use your time well. Understanding some meta aspects of work is very important. And sometimes studying nerd lives can give you how they manage those meta aspects which affect the actual aspects which make them money.
        noahc 15y ago
        Everything you've said is true, except for your first sentence. What we're talking about here is money as a proxy for an actual score board. At this resolution the score board is all that matters because we can't see the game being played.
  - gbog 15y ago
    Money is not a good point system, except if you think a big mac is more valuable than a book by Jane Austeen.
    - count 15y ago
      One of those can keep a starving man alive.
      - gbog 15y ago
        That is a real benefit on the big mac side, but in my current value scale it can't compete with the hours of delight, the self-improvement, the aesthetic pleasure, the deep insights in human hearts, etc. I am rewarded with when reading, say, Pride and Prejudice.
        icebraining 15y ago
        That's not inherent to the book, it's the value you put on the book. To my 8 year old brother, you can be sure the Big Mac will provide much more pleasure The value system you are pitting against money is completely subjective and therefore somewhat useless as a points system.
      - Fliko 15y ago
        A big mac would only keep the starving man alive for a few more hours. At least the man with the book could get some good entertainment before he starved to death.
    - noahc 15y ago
      What does this even mean? I assume that you're talking about in a moral sense because of the value judgement you appear to have made. Of course, when I say 'good' I don't mean in the moral sense. Imagine you were to design a way for people to keep score and they had to use tangible things. What would make one tangle item better than another? Here's a quick list I came up with... 1. Easily transferable. Money fulfills this because it can be transferred electronically. The physical good need not even exist. Money when talking about it as a point system is strictly an abstract. Put another way it is a stored value that can later be redeemed for big macs or Jane Austeen books. 2. It must be difficult to acquire. Money you can't just print (Well you can, but it is mostly worthless). The difficulty makes it more of a way to keep score in the game of life. There needs to be a way to prevent someone from adding to their score arbitrarily. 3. You must be able to keep score at small enough intervals. Keeping score by buying big macs becomes unproductive when you get into the millions of dollar range. At the same time keeping score in the form of luxury cars becomes impossible in the thousands of dollar range. That's why I said money is good. Not in the moral sense that those who have more money are better people or some form of Prosperity theology. Just that money has many of the traits needed to provide a way to keep score.
- balsam 15y ago
  I venture that PG knows at some level that he'll be best remembered for the creation of YC rather than for the creation of Arc.
Tichy 15y ago
So basically drop everything and start working on cancer research? Or maybe interstellar travel is even more important? Just saying that even this simple heuristic doesn't seem to help me :-(
- anthony_franco 15y ago
  I think what edw519 is getting at is that you should focus on the most important thing in the context of your business/goals. If you're a cancer researcher then, yes, get on top of that cancer research. But if you're doing a software product, focus on building out a great feature or talking to your customers before you start wasting time on a pretty logo.
ggwicz 15y ago
Focusing on what to do is fragile. Removing negatives and learning what not to do is often more valuable in a general sense. Health is a good example of this. "Doing" could include, for example, taking a drug. It may solve the surface problem, but its side effects are unknown and could have negative consequences that are harder to correct. On the other hand, behaviors can be removed (i.e. remove carbs, remove soda, remove sugar, etc.). Maybe their immediate effect is less apparent but they are systemically more valuable for everything and far less is open to going wrong.
kamaal 15y ago
I think you are talking about a variant of task priority management. All this at the end boils to down to do managing a todo list well.
zem 15y ago
i think that's a pretty bad metric. there's absolutely no reason that working on the most important problems in your field won't end up being a complete waste of your time, because you are ill-equipped to make any real progress on them. i prefer feynman's philosophy, as expressed in a letter to a student who felt that the problem he was working on wasn't "worthwhile" enough: The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. ... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it. -- Richard Feynman read the whole letter, it's very inspiring: http://scienceblogs.com/thescian/2008/03/what_are_worthwhile_problems_f.php http://scienceblogs.com/thescian/2008/03/what_are_worthwhile...

by edw519 15y ago

balsam 15y ago

One thing I've always wanted to ask PG is: does he think that helping smart people to get rich flipping companies (usually not by doing the "coolest thing") is cooler than making a great Lisp? One answer to why not, is: "No money".

noahc 15y ago
The really cool thing about money is that it makes an excellent points system. It's neat that you can trade green paper for physical things, but more importantly money is a way to keep score to two decimal places. Often times when people talk about money they are talking about resource gathering. At some point the resource gathering turns off and the money becomes an easy proxy for points. So I'm not sure that creating another Lisp is less cool, but it can't be easily measured. What if IBM uses your Lisp for everything they do, how does that compare to another guys Lisp that has 6.5 million downloads. Who is cooler?
- balsam 15y ago
  One might define a meritocracy as one in which the coolness signalling aspect of money is no different from the resource gathering aspect. You also raise the interesting point about the granularity of money: if IBM makes more money than the Lisper for her Lisp, does that make IBM cooler? It could.
  - noahc 15y ago
    I think you can see this in real world. Look at Linus or David of 37 Signals. They have created at least millions if not billions of dollars worth of value (uncollected). As a quick experiment with my girlfriend: Do you know who Linus is? => Uh, No. Do you know what Linux is? => Yeah, it's your system. Do you know what IBM is? => Yes, it's a computer company. It's pretty clear to me that outside of our nerd/geek bubble at the society level those that make more money are cooler.
    - kamaal 15y ago
      Talking about 'How much someone is rich' without talking about 'How someone became rich' is so plainly wrong. You have to work in order to make money. And to make a lot of money you need to work a lot, or at least harder. To do that you need to know how to use your time well. Understanding some meta aspects of work is very important. And sometimes studying nerd lives can give you how they manage those meta aspects which affect the actual aspects which make them money.
      - noahc 15y ago
        Everything you've said is true, except for your first sentence. What we're talking about here is money as a proxy for an actual score board. At this resolution the score board is all that matters because we can't see the game being played.
- gbog 15y ago
  Money is not a good point system, except if you think a big mac is more valuable than a book by Jane Austeen.
  - count 15y ago
    One of those can keep a starving man alive.
    - gbog 15y ago
      That is a real benefit on the big mac side, but in my current value scale it can't compete with the hours of delight, the self-improvement, the aesthetic pleasure, the deep insights in human hearts, etc. I am rewarded with when reading, say, Pride and Prejudice.
      - icebraining 15y ago
        That's not inherent to the book, it's the value you put on the book. To my 8 year old brother, you can be sure the Big Mac will provide much more pleasure The value system you are pitting against money is completely subjective and therefore somewhat useless as a points system.
    - Fliko 15y ago
      A big mac would only keep the starving man alive for a few more hours. At least the man with the book could get some good entertainment before he starved to death.
  - noahc 15y ago
    What does this even mean? I assume that you're talking about in a moral sense because of the value judgement you appear to have made. Of course, when I say 'good' I don't mean in the moral sense. Imagine you were to design a way for people to keep score and they had to use tangible things. What would make one tangle item better than another? Here's a quick list I came up with... 1. Easily transferable. Money fulfills this because it can be transferred electronically. The physical good need not even exist. Money when talking about it as a point system is strictly an abstract. Put another way it is a stored value that can later be redeemed for big macs or Jane Austeen books. 2. It must be difficult to acquire. Money you can't just print (Well you can, but it is mostly worthless). The difficulty makes it more of a way to keep score in the game of life. There needs to be a way to prevent someone from adding to their score arbitrarily. 3. You must be able to keep score at small enough intervals. Keeping score by buying big macs becomes unproductive when you get into the millions of dollar range. At the same time keeping score in the form of luxury cars becomes impossible in the thousands of dollar range. That's why I said money is good. Not in the moral sense that those who have more money are better people or some form of Prosperity theology. Just that money has many of the traits needed to provide a way to keep score.
balsam 15y ago
I venture that PG knows at some level that he'll be best remembered for the creation of YC rather than for the creation of Arc.

Tichy 15y ago

So basically drop everything and start working on cancer research? Or maybe interstellar travel is even more important? Just saying that even this simple heuristic doesn't seem to help me :-(

anthony_franco 15y ago
I think what edw519 is getting at is that you should focus on the most important thing in the context of your business/goals. If you're a cancer researcher then, yes, get on top of that cancer research. But if you're doing a software product, focus on building out a great feature or talking to your customers before you start wasting time on a pretty logo.

ggwicz 15y ago

Focusing on what to do is fragile. Removing negatives and learning what not to do is often more valuable in a general sense. Health is a good example of this. "Doing" could include, for example, taking a drug. It may solve the surface problem, but its side effects are unknown and could have negative consequences that are harder to correct. On the other hand, behaviors can be removed (i.e. remove carbs, remove soda, remove sugar, etc.). Maybe their immediate effect is less apparent but they are systemically more valuable for everything and far less is open to going wrong.

kamaal 15y ago

I think you are talking about a variant of task priority management. All this at the end boils to down to do managing a todo list well.

zem 15y ago

i think that's a pretty bad metric. there's absolutely no reason that working on the most important problems in your field won't end up being a complete waste of your time, because you are ill-equipped to make any real progress on them. i prefer feynman's philosophy, as expressed in a letter to a student who felt that the problem he was working on wasn't "worthwhile" enough: The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. ... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it. -- Richard Feynman read the whole letter, it's very inspiring: http://scienceblogs.com/thescian/2008/03/what_are_worthwhile_problems_f.php http://scienceblogs.com/thescian/2008/03/what_are_worthwhile...