I wonder how this affects programmers, who ostensibly think of things in a series of steps. When I explain programming to someone who doesn't know what it is, I liken it to instructing someone to do something they don't know how to do, e.g., make a sandwich. You have to tell them to walk to the fridge, gather the ingredients, place them down, work with them one at a time, etc. If programmers spend all day thinking like this, I wonder if that doesn't do something to their world view. I know that I personally find a lot of everyday activities very tedious, but maybe that's because they really are.
I actually find things a lot more enjoyable when there are a large number of well enumerated steps: It's easier to track progress and it doesn't make me worry that I'm doing something wrong.
What I don't like is something that requires lots of details but where the required details are ill defined.
I know I tend to lose enthusiasm for a problem when I can imagine all the steps required to implement a solution to it. It's as if problems become less interesting to my brain if it thinks it has a solution worked out as "all" that's left is just implementation. Of course I know better but it's still hard to get over the inertia caused by this.
This fellow has "discovered" one small fragment of vast enterprise known as Neurolinguistic Programming.
NLP has explored many generalizations of this sort and manages to make somewhat fewer generalizations than our blogger. NLP would say for some people, Tediousness is many small steps and fun is one big step. They'd even go into some manipulations to use that fact.
Of course, the validity of NLP itself is open to question but it's vast field that has already explored many of these kinds of things, the kind of thig that people often ... think they've invented themselves.
We as human beings have an almost innate ability to overlook the tediousness of certain tasks if we enjoy the overall process of accomplishing them. Personally, I find that I love working on distinctive projects that not only help myself become more productive, but also help my fellow earthlings accomplish tasks much more dexterously. This "love" is what fuels the fire of innovation and consequently cremates the long ladder of steps we as humans occasionally become overly aware of.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 20.0 ms ] threadWhat I don't like is something that requires lots of details but where the required details are ill defined.
This fellow has "discovered" one small fragment of vast enterprise known as Neurolinguistic Programming.
NLP has explored many generalizations of this sort and manages to make somewhat fewer generalizations than our blogger. NLP would say for some people, Tediousness is many small steps and fun is one big step. They'd even go into some manipulations to use that fact.
Of course, the validity of NLP itself is open to question but it's vast field that has already explored many of these kinds of things, the kind of thig that people often ... think they've invented themselves.