
How to Think - darklighter3
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/02/how-to-think/
======
suprgeek
This is an excellent piece with a couple of important lessons on how to think
effectively:

\- The ability to think creatively

\- The ability to substitute initially attractive moves with well thought out
log-term effective ones.

However on the other side of the coin is what we hackers face more often -
Analysis Paralysis.

Once you fall into the Analytical Mindset, there is such a thing as being too
analytical. Sometimes if it feels right you just go ahead and F*ing do it.

Otherwise the fear of making a wrong decision will paralyze you into inaction
- which is worse than a screw-up (usually). So it is a balancing act - think
enough but not too much. Analyze but not to the point of paralysis.

Edit: Spelling

~~~
antirez
Totally agree, however most of the times people designing programs can go back
and fix what they did, while a chess player can't. So one may try to
understand what's all this focus on getting it right the first time when the
topic is programming? I mean, it is not a good idea to do the first silly
thing, but something that looks pretty sane after some non trivial analysis,
is probably a good path. Well IMHO the reason most of the times is "fear".
Fear of wasting work, fear of other programmers looking at our code and
realize it is suboptimal, fear of not being totally "Right". However because
of this fear what gets lost is huge.

~~~
vyrotek
_" Well IMHO the reason most of the times is "fear". Fear of wasting work,
fear of other programmers looking at our code and realize it is suboptimal,
fear of not being totally "Right""_

This really resonated with me. I personally struggle with this on and off. I
just call it the programmer's curse. I sometimes wonder where this "fear"
originally came from. Did I pick it up from other developers? Did it evolve
over time from seeing the mistakes of others? Somehow I came to associate this
fear as something good developers are suppose to feel. Indeed I probably need
a little bit of this or I might make some really dumb mistakes. But sometimes
it really is paralyzing. It can be really hard at times to let go and convince
myself that I don't have to find the perfect solution for every challenge.
More specifically, I get hung up trying to predict future problems and solve
them. Sometimes you just won't know what will be thrown at you and your code
later. It probably goes along with what you described as wasting work. I
really don't like the idea of solving very similar problems with duplicated or
redundant solutions/code. In end though we often have time constraints and
failures beyond on control.

I feel like I had a better grasp on this when I worked for others. But now
that I work full-time on my own startup I tend to be even harder on myself.

(Completely unrelated, but I just wanted to say ciao. I saw you're based in
Sicily :) My mother is from Milano. I lived there for a couple of years as
well. Oh how I miss the blood oranges...)

~~~
girvo
Perhaps it has something to do with the imposter syndrome[0]. Feeling like
you're not a "real" programmer who doesn't "deserve" to have the position you
do would (I'd wager) cause that phenomenon of analysis paralysis; it would
cause us to want to get it right or we'd be "found out" for the "frauds" we
are.

I hate it, and I've found personally using the techniques like Pomodoro[1] has
helped immensely with just _doing_ something! along with TDD coupled with
exploratory programming.

How does everyone else deal with it?

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique)

~~~
vermasque
Analyzing for a fixed duration and then going with your gut is what I've
tried. However, I still get that nagging feeling sometimes that I'm not sure
about a decision. In these cases, I either ask someone for their opinion or
simply defer the decision, hoping I'll think of the right answer in the
shower. Of course, I still need to work on discipline. It's very easy to spend
a while on a decision because you can't get away from it until you feel you
have a right answer.

------
lotharbot
> _“It’s uncomfortable to focus so intensely on what you’re bad at,”_

When my wife was learning to play the piano, her teacher used to say "if
you're going to make a mistake, make it _loud_ so we can hear it and fix it."
I make my students do math in pen for the same reason -- instead of silently
making the same mistake over and over again, it gets made once, analyzed (by
the students), and fixed. This bothered the students at first, but they've
come around and become much more thoughtful about what they write.

> _“Teaching chess is really about teaching the habits that go along with
> thinking,” Spiegel explained to me one morning when I visited her classroom.
> “Like how to understand your mistakes and how to be more aware of your
> thought processes.”_ > _" I saw Spiegel trying to teach her students grit,
> curiosity, self-control, and optimism."_

Which is really what teaching is about. I think most teachers know this, and
we get a fairly healthy dose of it in professional development every week. I'm
a math teacher, but the training I get during the school year isn't in math,
it's in things like "accountable talk". It sounds like the teacher in this
article is particularly gifted and practiced.

This isn't just for classroom teachers. The same concepts matter for parenting
and in the workplace.

~~~
rando289
YES @ math in pen! I decided to do that on my own, and it was always seen as
just a weird quirk by anyone who ever saw it. Awesome to hear a math teacher
endorse it!

------
pdonis
Excellent quote here:

 _And I really believe that 's why we seem to win girls' nationals sections
pretty easily every year: most people won’t tell teenage girls (especially the
together, articulate ones) that they are lazy and the quality of their work is
unacceptable. And sometimes kids need to hear that, or they have no reason to
step up._

This could apply to boys as well as girls, and indeed to anyone at just about
any age; sometimes we need to be told that we're not measuring up. I am
reminded of Philip Greenspun's story about the venture capitalists who wrecked
ArsDigita, the company he had built (from
[http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/](http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/)):

 _[F]or most of this year Chip, Peter, and Allen [the VC Board members and
CEO] didn 't want to listen to me. They even developed a theory for why they
didn't have to listen to me: I'd hurt their feelings by criticizing their
performance and capabilities; self-esteem was the most important thing in
running a business; ergo, because I was injuring their self-esteem it was
better if they just turned a deaf ear. I'm not sure how much time these three
guys had ever spent with engineers. Chuck Vest, the president of MIT, in a
private communication to some faculty, once described MIT as "a no-praise
zone". My first week as an electrical engineering and computer science
graduate student I asked a professor for help with a problem. He talked to me
for a bit and then said "You're having trouble with this problem because you
don't know anything and you're not working very hard."_

~~~
imjk
This seems to be a common trend in the business world. Brilliant
engineer/visionary offends coworkers with (perhaps deserved) criticism in an
insensitive manner and the company flounders. It's only when said
engineer/visionary learns to act more tactfully that the company flourishes.

~~~
pdonis
_Brilliant engineer /visionary offends coworkers with (perhaps deserved)
criticism in an insensitive manner and the company flounders._

IMO the criticism was deserved; but your argument is basically that if the
company flounders, it doesn't matter whether the criticism was deserved or
not, since the bottom line is what happens to the company. I agree with that
in principle, but only if the coworkers in question would have been capable of
recognizing the deservedness of the criticism if it had been delivered more
tactfully. I'm not sure that was true in the ArsDigita case, because it
doesn't seem like the coworkers in question--"coworkers" is a weird term here
since we're talking about a Board member talking to other Board members--
understood the business they were in in the first place.

(Btw, the fact that it was a Board member talking to other Board members also
gives the point about tactfulness less force, IMO. People who can't separate
valid criticism from the way in which it's delivered, IMO should not be Board
members in the first place.)

 _It 's only when said engineer/visionary learns to act more tactfully that
the company flourishes._

It looks like that never happened in the ArsDigita case. Can you give some
examples where it has happened?

------
thruflo
The unparalleled Think Like a Grandmaster by Alexander Kotov explains not only
planning and strategy in chess but also the methodical use of time.

Assess the position. Identify the variations to consider. Evaluate each
variation for a roughly equivalent period of time. Choose the strongest.
Sanity check you haven't missed something. Move.

Repeat, exhaustively, without losing focus, for a multiple of hours.

Edit: the parallel with startups is clear. In chess, you can only think so far
ahead. This may be one or two moves, or for a strong player it may be five or
six. Either way, you have a visibility horizon but you have to move.

~~~
endgame
How well does Kotov's book translate to other fields? I've just done very
badly at an Android:Netrunner tournament and while I found a lot of
deckbuilding issues post-mortem, I also had a lot of mental failings.

~~~
hibikir
The same kind of approach from Kotov can be used on net runner, or more
traditional CCGs. You can see how that works in Magic, for instance, where the
top players have major amounts of visibility. Someone like Luis Scott Vargas
plays plenty of games out there, for people to see, and describing his thought
process (which makes him a worse player in those games, but that's to be
expected). You can still see the relentlessness that Kotov describes. He knows
his options by heart, based on his knowledge of his opponent's deck and all
cards available, he makes guesses, dedicates time to each decision, and them
moves.

For high level play, there's also issue of deception that do not apply to
chess, but will apply to Netrunner. Still, no good player will put deception
first in his analysis. If anything, it's the equivalent of Magnus Carlsen's
care for giving his opponent as many chances as possible of making a terrible
mistake, while still playing very good lines.

------
thaumaturgy
For people interested in brutalizing their egos and learning how to think in
some of the ways this article mentioned -- longer-term, more deliberately -- I
cannot strongly enough recommend learning how to play Go
([http://www.britgo.org/intro/intro2.html](http://www.britgo.org/intro/intro2.html)).

It's a less popular, but probably more suitable game than chess. The
individual rules are far simpler than chess, but the game play is way more
complex, with lots of edge cases.

It also has a built-in handicap system that makes it possible for players of
different ranks to play fair games, and the game board size can be scaled down
for beginners while they learn the basics.

------
Malarkey73
I think this falls in to the same trap as the stories earloer about the LHC
Physics group that have abandoned PowerPoint for a whiteboard. That something
is a good idea for a particular intellectual exercise its a good idea
generally for thinking, learning,success! No, chess is a quite particular
skill where you can't afford to make mistakes and the problem is bounded and
can be fully rationalised. Most creative or scientific endeavors are quite
different and some maybe be best learnt by experimentation trial and error.
I'm sure she has a great way to teach chess but I don't think its a panacea.

------
KiwiCoder
The article is titled 'How To Think'. It might be more aptly titled 'How To
Think About Failure' (in a way that shows failures are opportunities for self
improvement while success teaches us little).

Coincidentally the BBC ran a series this week 'The Value of Failure.'
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03xl7ff](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03xl7ff)

The series is well worth a listen - 5 x 15 minutes.

------
radicaledward
My number one concern with this approach is that it creates an extreme
dependence on an external locus of motivation. This seems like it would be
great if you want to turn children into excellent cogs for your machine, as in
the industrial age, but it could be horrible for creating pioneers and
innovators.

I would welcome approaches like this when combined with something like the
kind of educational freedom given at a montessori school. In this case, we're
looking at a chess team. So maybe the children are participating voluntarily
or maybe they aren't.

~~~
namenotrequired
I agree. I'm missing a vital piece of the discussion from both the blog and
the comments here; what do the children think of it? Sure they're performing
above expectations at a game, but are they happy?

------
cbaker
I'm sympathetic to the ideas in the article, but is there any, you know,
actual /data/ to support that calling kids lazy and telling them their work is
unacceptable is an effective way to teach? I talk to people who study this
stuff and do consulting for people like the US military (who aren't
particularly known for their touchy-feely approach to training), and, as far
as I can tell, this doesn't work particularly well.

~~~
snowwrestler
If all you do is call kids lazy and their work unacceptable, then no, it's
probably not going to work.

The essential point is to set clear expectations for performance, and enforce
them consistently. There is quite a bit of research along these lines in
parenting, coaching, and business management, although I don't have links
handy.

It can be hard to stick to this plan in the face of childhood emotional
distress. There's a school of thought that the goal of childhood is to
relentlessly build up self-esteem so that kids feel good about themselves, and
are better equipped to handle hard coaching later. This gives permission to
relax performance standards in favor of making kids feel good--e.g.
"participation trophies" and "as long as you tried your best."

What this article (and many others recently) argues is that kids are plenty
capable of dealing with performance standards, so long as they are perceived
as fair and consistent. Kids who learn to persevere and improve are better
equipped to continue doing that later in life.

The specific language this coach uses is just window dressing. The important
thing is that she does not let her kids off the hook if they fail to meet the
standard of performance.

------
prestadige
>most people won’t tell teenage girls [...] that they are lazy and the quality
of their work is unacceptable

Yes. If a male teacher, for example, were to 'rampage' around female pupils,
he'd be sacked.

------
j2kun
It's really difficult to get students to think hard about the feedback you
give them. This article gives a great way to do that, and I think it's a large
part of the success. Simply making them confront their own mistakes honestly.

------
Malarkey73
I think this falls in to the same trap as the stories earlier about the LHC
Physics group that have abandoned PowerPoint for a whiteboard. That something
is a good idea for a particular intellectual exercise its a good idea
generally for thinking, learning,success! No, chess is a quite particular
skill where you can't afford to make mistakes and the problem is bounded and
can be fully rationalised. Most creative or scientific endeavors are quite
different and some maybe be best learnt by experimentation trial and error.
I'm sure she has a great way to teach chess but I don't think its a panacea.

------
yoha
By principle, I noticed something that looks like selection bias: she seems to
only criticize the decisions on wrong moves without comparing them to when he
did well. After all, maybe he just spent one second on the good moves because
his instinct is very good?

I know in practice he should have used the available time, but I wanted to
underline the one flaw of the article; the rest is pretty good.

~~~
danielharan
Same with startups: we don't analyze successes as much as we scrutinize
failures.

~~~
foobarqux
Failures are hardly ever analyzed. Successes are usually mis-analyzed using
some false narrative with bad decisions and elements of luck entirely
discounted.

~~~
danielharan
That is not at all what I've seen from various founders in my network. Those
who fail spend far more time analyzing what happened.

~~~
foobarqux
I was talking about outsiders.

------
erikpukinskis
What I think makes her approach powerful is that she does BOTH of two very
important things: she expects the kids do more than they are, and she only
asks them to take the step right in front of them.

I see a lot of teachers/parents/bosses doing one or the other. They demand
more of a kid, but fail to properly assess where the kid is, and therefore ask
a little bit too much, setting the kid up for failure. Or they acknowledge
where the kid is but fail to really push them to take the next step, leading
to complacency. Both ultimately lead to fear.

In practice doing it right requires immense knowledge of both the subject and
the student, which is what makes it hard. But when done right, people respond
by growing very fast. And the experience, while sometimes exhausting, feels
humane and healthy.

------
startupstella
If you like this story, check out Brooklyn Castle- a really great documentary
about that school and its chess program-
[http://www.brooklyncastle.com/](http://www.brooklyncastle.com/)

------
NAFV_P
> _Elizabeth Spiegel, the school’s chess teacher, was waiting._

At my school in the UK, we didn't have a chess teacher. I'm presuming that not
every school in the US has a chess teacher.

Coincidentally, Ms Spiegel reminds me of an old English teacher of mine.

> _Before she was a a full-time chess teacher, Spiegel taught an eighth-grade
> honors English class. She taught them the same way she taught Sebastian:
> ruthlessly analyzing everything._

I would consider it a shame if she had actually stopped teaching English
(especially the comprehension). I often notice how my sentences are
_elaborated_ by others, even occasionally on HN.

------
dynamic99
Farnam Street is an awesome blog. I've been following it for the past year and
a half or so, and it's really a collection of priceless information.

~~~
henrik_w
Agree. I've been a subscriber of the newsletter for a while now, and the
contents is almost always excellent.

------
chippy
I think that tests are a way for programmers to replicate some of these moves.
Have the expected outcome the goal, and ensuring that the internals will
always work as expected.

By taking each component separately, by developing and iterating each little
bit at the time, like a chess move, a good program can be made.

Perhaps those genius programmers who don't need to write tests do this process
automatically.

------
Elizer0x0309
I can't stress enough the main step to increase thinking skills and self is to
introspect. Every challenge requires it to fully learn and grow from it. When
solving problems for example, it is not only the solution that is important
but also the very process to arrive to that solution. Aka: "Thinking" and
"Meta-Thinking".

------
frade33
Some decisions had to be made quick. But Most of them do not have to. However
all of us tend to make quick decisions even when not required.

------
bluecalm
I don't like it. I think it's very important to make people comfortable with
the idea that they often make mistakes and their thinking is not up to par.
You need to make them comfortable thinking about their thinking and being open
about it. To do that you need to point a lot of mistakes and encourage them to
think about the process leading to them. That's difficult for many people
(because of ego mainly). However the woman from the article doesn't achieve it
in my view. Her way is to inflict guilt:

>>Spiegel’s face tensed. “We did not bring you here so that you could spend
two seconds on a move,” she said with an edge in her voice

>>“This is pathetic. If you continue to play like this, I’m going to withdraw
you from the tournament,

>> I’m very, very, very upset to be seeing such a careless and thoughtless
game.

I call it bullying. Why not just focus on the thought process and try to
detach emotions from it, that's what the kid needs to learn in the first
place:

-"How much time did you spend here?"

-"Two seconds"

-"You see, spending two seconds here led to a blunder which you suffered from for rest of the game, we need to work on your thinking habits. There is not much time for that now and as I screw up as your teacher not teaching it to you before for now I only suggest that once you decide on a move, look away from the board, try to reset your mind, sit on your hands and look at the board as freshly as possible for 15 seconds to see if you are not blundering anything".

Then you add: "Thinking habits in chess are everything, a lot of brilliant
players never make progress because occasional slips and a lot of not-so-
brilliant ones enjoy success because they avoid simple mistake thanks to good
habits". "We are going to work on this after the tournament, there are many
ways. Rest assured it's main problem chess players have, you are not alone.
How well people improve in that area is going to be a difference between
winning and losing so it's exciting area to focus on". Then you discuss ego,
how not willing to admit your own mistakes is major road block and how it's
perfectly ok to discuss mistakes but it's not ok to be happy about them or
comfortable with them! You need healthy dose of ambition you need to be
disappointed... but optimistic and believing you can get better. Feeling
guilty won't lead there. Feeling like you are disappointing other people won't
lead there (even if it won't be long term, it's dependence on external
motivator - disappointing someone. At one time this someone won't be there).
If you act like the woman from the article people will avoid you - nobody
wants to feel guilty after all. They want to improve, work on their thinking,
compete and have fun.

Her way shows characteristics of bad teachers and bad parent. I've encountered
both and I think it's the best way to kill natural joy and passion quickly
even if you get some quick results - it won't be long term and it won't be to
maximum potential.

~~~
pdonis
_I think it 's very important to make people comfortable with the idea that
they often make mistakes and their thinking is not up to par._

I don't think "comfortable" is the right word here. People who feel
comfortable with failure will continue to fail. It's important for people to
understand that they will make mistakes, yes, and that they should not be
stopped by it--they should try to do better next time. But to me that's the
exact opposite of feeling "comfortable" with making mistakes; making mistakes
should make you feel _uncomfortable_ until you've figured out how to not make
those mistakes again.

 _Her way is to inflict guilt_

I don't think "guilt" is the right word here either. She is expressing
disappointment, but it's disappointment with what the person did, not with who
the person is. "Guilt" implies that she is saying they're a bad person, and
she's not; she's saying they could have done better.

 _Why not just focus on the thought process and try to detach emotions from
it_

Because the emotions are what motivate a person to do better.

 _At one time this someone won 't be there_

True; and what happens then will depend on how well the person has
internalized the _emotional_ drive to do better. That won't happen if the only
coaching they've gotten is dispassionate commentary on their thought
processes. If nobody expresses disappointment when they make mistakes, they
won't learn to be disappointed with themselves when they make mistakes, so
they won't care about doing better.

 _If you act like the woman from the article people will avoid you_

But that doesn't seem to be happening; the woman's students don't seem to be
avoiding her, they seem to be taking her criticisms seriously and improving
their game.

~~~
bloodorange
Interesting question raised and an interesting answer from you. Both made me
think and have made my day better by making me smarter than before.

If I may add _one_ suggestion to both, it is to say "Elizabeth" or "Spiegel"
instead of "the woman from the article" or something like that. It makes the
reference more human.

~~~
pdonis
_If I may add _one_ suggestion to both, it is to say "Elizabeth" or "Spiegel"
instead of "the woman from the article" or something like that. It makes the
reference more human._

Good point.

------
whatevsbro
>> By the end of round three I was starting to feel like an abusive jerk and
was about to give up and be fake nice instead.

 _Feel_ like an abusive jerk? -She _is_ one. She's behaving like one of those
Chinese "Tiger Moms".

>> But then in round four everyone took more than an hour and started playing
well.

But then, her bullying started getting results, and she let out a sigh of
relief. She wouldn't "need" to tone it down and _fake niceness_ after all.

Fear is an efficient motivator. The kids work hard to avoid the psychological
pain she'll inflict on them for not performing up to her expectations.

~~~
pdonis
But she doesn't just comment negatively when they make mistakes; she also
comments positively when they play well. That's in the article too. If she
were using fear motivation, she wouldn't say anything when they play well.

------
mantrax
This kind of leadership / teaching is also known as the "hero / shithead"
rollercoaster, a term coined by Apple and NeXT employees for what it was to
work with Steve Jobs.

As the name suggest, it's just as important to strongly praise to correct
moves as it is important to strongly scorn the bad moves.

We don't have emotions as some quirk of our evolutionary paths. Emotions are a
tool. Like any tool, when used correctly, it produces amazing results.

