On Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:36:51 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>>>> Surprise, this is the process of writing.
>>>
>>> No, a successful writing process eventually involves *solving* the
>>> ordering problem.
>>
>> Then you need practice, with people to help you.  With a little
>> practice and guidance, even YOU could learn how to do this. ;-)
> 
> Well, here's to hoping.

Don't hope.  Practice.

>>> There are plenty of problems which *actually are* NP-complete, but it
>>> doesn't stop people solving them on a regular basis.
>>
>> Now you're getting the idea.  You don't *have* to be perfect, you don't
>> even really *have* to be nearly perfect.  You have to get to "good
>> enough" to meet the requirements.
> 
> Perhaps I'm just too much of a perfectionist then.

That is common for people in technical fields - so you're not alone.  I 
still struggle every day with "is it good enough?", made doubly difficult 
as I've transitioned into a management role (albeit for programs rather 
than people currently), and I continuously have to remind myself that 
just because something wasn't done the way I would have done it, doesn't 
make it wrong.

>>> I tried drawing a mindmap for Haskell. (When I eventually found a tool
>>> that can actually draw them!) What I discovered is that everything is
>>> a prerequisite for everything else!>_<  Looking at the dense tangle of
>>> intimately related topics, it's difficult to see where to start.
>>
>> Then that's not actually a mindmap.
> 
> Well, OK, I don't know what the precise term is, but I drew a chart of
> all the topics I wanted to talk about and which ones are interrelated.
> You know what? *EVERYTHING* is interrelated! >_<

That's a start.  Problem is that nobody really teaches how to use them 
effectively, certainly not in the US schools.  I would've done much 
better in school if I'd been taught how to use that as a way of taking 
effective notes, for example.

>> Then under General (for example), I created buckets for things like
>> "Customer" and "Partner", and listed the things that would be benefits
>> to each of those.  Is there overlap?  Sure, and some of those benefits
>> fall under specific phases - but in this case, if it fell under Phase 1
>> or Phase 2, then it didn't go under General because it was already
>> classified as an action to be done as part of implementation.
> 
> OK. Well maybe I'll try again with something slightly less insane...

That's the way to do it, start with something simple, and work up to the 
larger projects.  You wouldn't try to play Beethoven's 9th Symphony on 
the violin without first working through Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, so 
don't try to do a symphony your first time out writing.

>>> Not if you suck at research...
>>
>> Then you need to learn to ask for help.  Nobody is born knowing how to
>> do research - everyone has to learn it.  It can be learned, and even
>> those who are experts at it learn more each time they research a topic.
> 
> I still remember the "research training" we did at university. This
> consisted of knowing where the library keep the various documents they
> hold. No indication of how you figure out what documents exist or which
> ones might be useful or...

That sounds about as useful as a class my stepson has just audited - he's 
in his 4th year (of 4) at Uni here, and one course he hadn't taken 
because his schedule didn't fit it was "how to use the library" (I'm not 
kidding about this).  His advisor said that as he was in his 4th year and 
had been on the dean's list every term that there was little point to 
making him take the class; if he didn't know how to do research now, it 
wasn't going to help him get his degree any more (since he clearly knows 
how to do research).

For me, though, it comes down to the word association game I mentioned in 
another recent post.  When I want to research, for example, how a testing 
system works (since that's what my job consists of now), my resources are 
mostly people that work on such systems.  But if I have to get into 
psychometrics (which I occasionally do, though I don't need to understand 
the actual statistics that make up psychometrics), then I know I need to 
look at statistics.  I know that because I had to look up what 
psychometrics actually is.

So I guess the other part is learning how to break a complex topic down 
into manageable pieces.  That's also a learnable skill, and not something 
that anyone innately knows how to do.

Jim

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