Ability to calculate

    There is a colloquial verb “calculate”, which means - to simulate in the head various options for the development of events and consequences. Today I want to talk about the ability to calculate moves, and why this is the most important skill in life.

    First, a small introduction. Have you ever wondered why many great people like chess? Why Sergey Galitsky (the billionaire, built the Magnit network from scratch), speaking about the things that are important for a beginner businessman, said first of all about logic (by the way, in chess, Sergey was a good expert in his time). Why is the famous blogger Fritz Morgen talking about the same logic. And the outstanding businessman Dmitry Potapenko, talking about how he managed to build his chain of stores and restaurants, while modeling business processes, suggests using flowcharts of algorithms from the eighth grade?

    Because they know how to lay out tasks in the head into several iterations, several steps.

    This skill, coupled with a number of others, plays an invaluable role in my life.
    Its essence is that you immediately in your head, when you think over a task, immediately try to decompose it into several iterations (from two or more). The principle of “can you not do it” helps very often, when the first iteration is specially chosen as simple as possible, consisting only of the necessary, in order to get through it as quickly as possible and get real live information for further stages.

    A typical example. There is a problem in the development of programs - you can simultaneously satisfy any two of the following three qualities: quickly, cheaply, efficiently.

    As a rule, if you do everything quickly, you get a product that you can’t develop and scale later - you need to rewrite everything first. And if you do it qualitatively, then the product takes so long that by the time of delivery it does not meet business conditions.

    Easily solves this paradox of the approach, when first a simple version of the product is made, it is brought to the market as quickly as possible, but taking into account that there will be a revision. Feedback is received, understanding of the problem is improved, and then many subsequent versions are made. Between versions time is given for refactoring, putting the code in order, and improving the quality of the product.

    It is also worth noting the change problem, which buried the so-called waterfall software development management approaches and spawned agile iteration-based methodologies. The bottom line is that a program cannot be made good without trying on real data. And you can try it only after the development is completed. It’s a kind of paradox, therefore, often already in the process, customers, rethinking the project, try to make changes before the completion of the project. Which, as a rule, is impossible due to a powerful long-term plan (waterfall, for example, RUP), under which all business development processes are sharpened. As an answer, Agile methodologies were born, which consist of an endless cycle of iterations, when a budget is fixed for a certain period (for example, a month) and what should be done for that period is selected, and after the expiration of the period the situation is studied and a plan for a new iteration is drawn up. In fact, this is a phased development, with a review of everything at each stage.

    I’ll try to generalize the approach and why it is so important. First of all, the approach is aimed at effective problem solving. Efficiency is the fastest approach to the goal with a minimum of resource costs.
    Why is this approach very effective?

    As a rule, the solution to any problem consists, if greatly simplified, of "theory" and "practice." What does a conventional solution to a problem look like for a person who fails? Man builds a very powerful “theory” in his head. However, trying to plunge deeply into the problem, he makes mistakes in the process of thinking. Simply put, his thinking process in his head contains errors and incorrect assumptions that will lead to failure. An incomplete list can be found on Wikipedia .

    It can be said that often a person has knowledge and facts, but does not have sufficient wisdom.

    The most common are two misconceptions: the idea that you can immediately plan a large and complex system for solving the problem, and that this system can be effectively done in one approach.

    Let us examine the first error. Regrettably, any movement in any direction begins only when it is known where to move.
    • Any information about whether you are moving correctly is achieved by the difference between “theory” and “practice”.
    • Further, the faster you try “practice”, the faster you get information to refresh the “theory”.
    • The more times you repeat the process, the more harmonious and close to “practice” will be “theory”.
    • The more times a process can be repeated over a fixed period of time, the faster the level of “theory” grows, and the solution of the problem and the final result are achieved
    • From the foregoing, the conclusion follows: for the most effective movement towards any task, the tactics of as many real live actions as possible with constant rethinking of the current state of affairs are optimal.


    The second fallacy is refuted by a counterexample. So, those striving to make immediately an “ideal” tasty product, immediately a cool site, a cool car, or there nanotechnology will be amazed by the following data. It turns out that one team in the west managed to meet the budget and timelines for the construction of the airport and solve a number of important problems in the construction process using this principle. First, they built a cheap model in full size and let real people go there. Studying how people walk in living conditions, being themselves as visitors to the airport, civil engineers anticipated a lot of problems and got a lot of interesting ideas, which ultimately made it possible to make the construction unusually effective, significantly increase the efficiency of airport employees and greatly reduce the waiting time in queues for passengers.

    Even in simple life. Take a person who wants to learn English. He immediately tries to start reading books or films, realizes how much he needs to work, and throws the task. The task seems unsolvable and big.

    At the same time, using the one-day approach that I wrote about earlier, and this iteration approach, this problem can be solved.

    True, it requires a little more magic :) You just need to know that a person needs an easy entrance to start a business successfully. That for effective work every day you need either a very strong motivation (which is rare) or a developed habit (you can develop any habit in yourself). That a month is enough to develop a habit. That for effective memorization it is best to record and combine words with any visual image, forcing not only one hemisphere of the brain to work, but both at once. And so on - all this knowledge is acquired in the presence of the thing called enthusiasm, and I call “burning eyes” in the staff. Somehow there will be a post about this, and about the role of labor in human life ...

    Knowing this, the first simple steps are taken, which does not require much effort. Write out and learn on the road every day 10 words. To listen to audio recordings in English in the background, somehow related to interesting or enjoyable things - be it jokes, sci-fi audio books or BBC radio broadcasts. Watch your favorite movie in English once a week on the weekend without subtitles (all dialogs in the film should be known, if only in meaning).

    As a result, the person focuses on English (see the post on focusing), develops a habit and further training goes on the thumb. And in a year he masters the language.

    My acquaintance thus, studying at the two highest and working on a free schedule, on the road learned five languages ​​of different sound families - including Spanish, Chinese and French.

    In general, iterations rule.

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