

Imagining lots of tedious steps? Or one fun step? - sivers
http://sivers.org/steps

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rudd
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.

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DannoHung
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.

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rooshdi
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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joe_the_user
Wow,

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.

