
Streams - kcl
http://kevinlawler.com/streams
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iambateman
I love the way he describes streams. Since he ends with our own personal work,
I'd like to draw another analogy.

I've spent 1-2 thousand hours playing and practicing ping pong. As a result,
I'm better than the average person (though not overpowering). One of the
things I've noticed about poor players is they take the point total for what
it is at this exact moment. It's not unusual for an average ping pong player
to be up by 3 or 4 points midway through a match and - I swear - without fail
you see them get excited. Breathing speeds up. Muscles tighten. Shots are a
little harder. They're winning.

These people are experiencing a spike.

On the other hand, my game doesn't change just because the score is 7-11 and
I'm down. Serves are the same and shots hold their pace and breathing stays
regular. Why? Because my game is a stream. I know I have more ping pong
experience and better fundamentals, so I trust my game more than I trust the
score. Spikes happen all the time in both directions. But streams win games.

But I wasn't always good. When I was a child, my father and I would grab
paddles and head to the garage. Every game I played for two years was a loss.
21-14, 21-18, 21-8, 21-9, 21-16...for years. He would never ever ever let me
win. Never. I know, because I never did.

Until one day.

Like usual, we were playing a tight match and suddenly the game turned my way.
23-21, I won in overtime. I'll never forget walking across the garage to shake
his hand, look him in the eye and hear: "congratulations, good game."

Well, I kept practicing (college was fun) and now I rarely lose.

The truth about streams lies at the heart of most important things in life. I
call it direction. and you know what? When things are good, I think smart
people know about direction. The real problems are when you are practicing
_anything_ and keep losing. For me, right now, that's customer development.
I'm scared to death to call a potential customer. Even though I know it's ok
when they say no. Those calls are practice and with enough training and
practice I can "win". But the idea still makes me shiver.

Direction matters more than the score.

~~~
deathflute
Well said. If you have or build an "edge" over time the distribution of your
outcomes will have a positive mean. Along the way you may see values on the
tails which are random spikes.

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artagnon
Very coherent piece on a familiar concept.

I think of spikes as ways to sustain streams. They're also the quick route to
making bad decisions. It's encouraging to see your investments jump in value
every now and then, but if you sell a stock that's doing badly when you could
have waited until it bounced back, you're making a bad decision. Another
instance: you're steadily learning machine learning, and the motivation starts
to drop; you post your little project on HN, and it makes the front page for a
day; you suddenly feel better about learning it. In this case, the spike is a
sneak peek into the future: you'll have a decent following if you really push
yourself to learn.

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mproud
Stream — Previously defined

Steam — What it takes to get a project done

Team — The people who help drive the project

Tea — Brain fuel!

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tomelders
Can i suggest we call the spikes "blips", if for no other reason than to avoid
confusion when talking about "spikes" with project managers and product
owners.

