RichardKennaway comments on The First Step is to Admit That You Have a Problem - Less Wrong

53 Post author: Alicorn 06 October 2009 08:59PM

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Comment author: DanArmak 06 October 2009 09:42:16PM *  3 points [-]

Short summary:

  1. To achieve a goal, it's usually best to plan the entire sequence of actions in advance.
  2. Coming up with a really good plan is often much harder than carrying it out.
  3. We humans have a common failure mode where we don't stop to plan, or don't think out a plan before executing it, or even feel a problem is insoluble without having tried to come up with a plan.
  4. Therefore it's useful to plan explicitly, to recognize when we do and don't have a plan, and to have a good estimate of success for the plan and of each step in it.

As far as I understand, all the rest is examples. Did I miss anything?

Comment author: RichardKennaway 07 October 2009 11:48:37AM 3 points [-]

I didn't see the post as being about plans at all. Planning is vastly overrated anyway. Planning is solving the problem in your imagination, and the more steps, the less likely they are to all proceed as imagined.

Ask a car mechanic how often a repair can be completed by first planning out each thing that needs to be done, then executing the plan. My experience of doing occasional work on my car has been that it never goes exactly as described in the Haynes manual, and that's not a criticism of the manual.

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