4 ms·

This has nothing to do with focus - it's explaining cost-benefit analysis.

makeitdouble 4y ago
I'd argue it's the same thing. At the end of the day, keeping focus or not is a cost-benefit analysis. Put another way, focus isn't something to value in absolute, it needs to make sense in business and opportunity perspectives. You say No to good ideas only if you're confident your current plan is good enough and worth pursuing on its own.
- glenstein 4y ago
  Right, I think that your interpretation here is basically correct. There's a lot of different words and ideas we can use to represent approaches to problem solving, and they're going to overlap a lot. And I think the exercise of treating them like they're mutually exclusive and "correcting" our choice of language by saying one term is more correct than another, more often than not, is just kind of tedious and beside the point. It's a good general rule of thumb for understanding any of these articles, and affording them what the philosopher Daniel Dennett referred to as the principle of charity. It's not to say that such corrections are never appropriate but that the principle of charity step should be completed before going into the exercise of attempting to correct language.
sooyoo 4y ago
Exactly. The author is arguing that certain ideas looked good but at further inspection were actually less good. Rejecting a genuinely good idea is much harder.
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago
  Rejecting these kinds of ideas - business adjacencies - is especially difficult. I've worked at a number of places and every single one did this exact thing - lost focus on sensible sounding adjacencies.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Even Google does this of course :-). They can afford it.
    - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
      They are the worst offenders. Maybe they can afford it, but I'd argue it costs more than they'd like to admit.
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
He isn't explaining cost benefit, he's using cost benefit. And basically saying people don't do a good job thinking through the cost side and/or it's harder than it seems.
definitelyhuman 4y ago
I agree the first two points are more about understanding trade-offs - but the result is still focus. Overall I thinks it’s a good articles about achieving goals. Focus can be an overused word, but still works well here IMO

I'd argue it's the same thing. At the end of the day, keeping focus or not is a cost-benefit analysis. Put another way, focus isn't something to value in absolute, it needs to make sense in business and opportunity perspectives. You say No to good ideas only if you're confident your current plan is good enough and worth pursuing on its own.

glenstein 4y ago
Right, I think that your interpretation here is basically correct. There's a lot of different words and ideas we can use to represent approaches to problem solving, and they're going to overlap a lot. And I think the exercise of treating them like they're mutually exclusive and "correcting" our choice of language by saying one term is more correct than another, more often than not, is just kind of tedious and beside the point. It's a good general rule of thumb for understanding any of these articles, and affording them what the philosopher Daniel Dennett referred to as the principle of charity. It's not to say that such corrections are never appropriate but that the principle of charity step should be completed before going into the exercise of attempting to correct language.

sooyoo 4y ago

Exactly. The author is arguing that certain ideas looked good but at further inspection were actually less good. Rejecting a genuinely good idea is much harder.

danielmarkbruce 4y ago
Rejecting these kinds of ideas - business adjacencies - is especially difficult. I've worked at a number of places and every single one did this exact thing - lost focus on sensible sounding adjacencies.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Even Google does this of course :-). They can afford it.
  - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
    They are the worst offenders. Maybe they can afford it, but I'd argue it costs more than they'd like to admit.

danielmarkbruce 4y ago

He isn't explaining cost benefit, he's using cost benefit. And basically saying people don't do a good job thinking through the cost side and/or it's harder than it seems.

definitelyhuman 4y ago

I agree the first two points are more about understanding trade-offs - but the result is still focus. Overall I thinks it’s a good articles about achieving goals. Focus can be an overused word, but still works well here IMO