It is a great article as always. I am puzzled about the metric Tthinking x Tdoing. I assumed that it is a device you use to demonstrate that the non-linearity of the relation between time spent thinking and time spent on doing things. Is there any more significance to it? Can it really be a plausible proxy of the quality of the outcome of the think/do process?
Thanks Halim, glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the comment. You are right that it is mainly used here to demonstrate that the outcome we care about in a situation is often not a linear combination of the inputs (e.g., if the metric we chose was the sum rather than the product of Tthinking and Tdoing this wouldn't make the point). I'm playing a bit fast and loose with the math here and essentially conclude without justification that the product of these two is something that we care about and is indicative of the quality of the outcome.
All of that said, I think there is something to the notion that there is some optimal sweet spot of the amount of time we should spend thinking/planning before we try something out. And of course we can use the remaining time to run an experiment. The product of those two nicely illustrates this sweet spot effect.
I'll have to think more about whether there is a better justification for using the product as a metric other than simply noting that it makes the point about the nonlinear relationship.
Loved reading this this morning. I've been thinking lately about how we try so hard to point students in the right direction, help ease their path towards learning when in reality it is their struggle (albeit surmountable struggle) that is going to result in the best learning. By letting them "rip," it is allowing them to enter into their own doing AND thinking, rather than just our thinking. And as always, in higher education, I think we all need constant reminders to stop thinking and overthinking so much of the time, so thanks for that!
Thanks Megan. Love this: "allowing them to enter into their own thinking AND doing, rather than just our own thinking." A great way of highlighting the way that "letting it rip" helps to build a community rather than a more transactional form of education.
Great essay, as usual, Josh. My one caution is that we don't need to start with the distinction between doing and thinking to get there. While I agree that a balance is in order, the value I see in prototyping or design thinking in general is that the distinction between thinking and doing collapses and you are mostly thinking about what you doing or doing what you are thinking.
One of the insights of Williams James was to see doing and thinking, or thinking and thinker, as relations rather than as discrete entities. "Let it rip" and a "bias toward action" are quite Jamesian attitudes, which is where you end up. Indeed, I hope more and more of us are teaching from that starting position.
Thanks Rob, this is a great point. I can always count on you to sprinkle some William James into the conversation. Could you point me to a good place to start reading him on this?
I totally agree that thinking vs. doing is a false dichotomy. Probably something here I need to stew on to revise my math to more accurately model what's actually going on :)
I always suggest Pragmatism as the place to start with James. Those essays weave together insights about science, culture, and religion that he developed while writing Principles of Psychology. Principles is rich, dense, and comprehensive, and focused on laying out what we know scientifically about the human mind. Pragmatism distills much of what's in Principles but frames the insights within cultural questions about how to act in a world we are creating as we go. After Pragmatism, its Essays in Radical Empiricism.
Your question reminds me that I need to complete a post I started long ago, a sort of bibliographical essay on James. Since I am not writing for an academic audience, i don't clutter up my writing with a bunch of references. However, I want my readers to read James and the other early pragmatists, so I should really provide some starting places.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll add Pragmatism to the list. And I'll keep my eyes out for your piece on James. Sounds like it would be a valuable intro for many of us in this orbit.
Thanks Lorraine. Thanks as well for noting the consonance with Agile principles—that's a great angle to consider as well.
If you're looking for some more inspiration, I highly recommend Austin Kleon's book "Show Your Work" which was really influential in my own thinking on these ideas. I think you would enjoy it if you haven't read it yet. Even better, it's a quick and delightful afternoon read! https://www.amazon.com/Show-Your-Work-Austin-Kleon/dp/076117897X
A student's perspective: when I am doing research, work, or personal projects, there is less of a time constraint so I feel free to take my time iterating, alternating between thinking and doing, ultimately resulting in a better outcome.
However due to the intense workload of a school like Mudd, particularly during the core curriculum, I find I am often in one of two mindsets. The first is "I have three problem sets, a lab report, and a paper due this week so I need to get this done faster" which results in "letting it rip" too hard, doing a disproportionate amount of doing. Sometimes I have been lucky and this approach has just work but other times I get punished because my assignment was not planned out. I am specifically thinking of coding assignments, where the code builds on itself vs. a problem set where each problem can stand alone.
The other extreme that I find myself in is overthinking, because I feel that getting it done in one attempt will save me time.
The reality is that iterating produces the best outcome, but also I feel as though I do not have the bandwidth to do so. At least, not if I want to have some semblance of a social life. Even though iterating is on average better (and I would argue almost always better for learning), another reality is that if I get lucky, it's actually much faster to overthink/not think at all compared to the more balanced approach.
For research or my job, I am generally given longer time frames to do things (e.g. get this done by this conference in two months, get this done by the end of your internship in 10 weeks) which affords me the freedom to alternate. But at school when I am faced with weekly deadlines on top of 50 other things I have to keep track of, the shortcut approach becomes much more enticing.
Thanks Devon, good points here. I appreciate you sharing your experience. I appreciate the color you've added to the two ends of the spectrum where there is either too much doing without thinking and vice versa.
You've put your finger on another important aspect which is fundamental to the prototyping mindset: the importance of iteration. I like to think about the quality of a final product as connected to the number of quality design cycles I put into it.
One wonder I have is about how we might better structure classes to avoid the overwhelm. Sometimes I wonder how much of it is self-imposed by taking on too much (I am so guilty as charged on this). I think that a lot of this is embedded in the culture and expectations and it might be interesting to think about ways to think differently to avoid feeling buried.
> I want to structure my courses to help students embrace failure and cultivate a natural bias toward action.
I hear this sentiment a lot with regards to entrepreneurship, and perhaps it's not that we need to "embrace failure" but redefine what failure is. Let's take my favorite analogy, racing. If I train for a marathon, is it a failure if I hit my "B" goal instead of my "A" goal? Is it a failure if I don't finish but save myself from a catastrophic injury?
Building on that last question, perhaps the only true failure is the result that takes you out of the game. So long as you're still playing, you're still growing and learning and developing. And that's all a win.
It's interesting because I spend a significant amount of time coaching to slow down and think more. One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Einstein; “If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes coming up with solutions.”
BUT.... Sometimes we need to start doing something to help define the problem better. In the Army, we did our planning and then we do a leader's recon to confirm the lay of the land and then we go and execute.
I also had to just kick off and start writing my book before I had all my thoughts together and I'm glad I did because it allow it to take on a life of it's own.
I really dislike the hubris of overconfident execution. I think it really boils down to the scale of doubt. Pure doubt = Spend more time planning because you haven't defined the problem right
Balanced doubt = Let it rip and adjust
Zero doubt = Spend more time planning because you haven't defined the right problem (yes, inverse from pure doubt intentionally)
But now you've given me an idea for a new essay of my own.
Amazing post! And indeed useful. Let it rip (thank you for quoting my most loved show since Stranger Things)
Thanks, Alberto. Glad you liked it!
It is a great article as always. I am puzzled about the metric Tthinking x Tdoing. I assumed that it is a device you use to demonstrate that the non-linearity of the relation between time spent thinking and time spent on doing things. Is there any more significance to it? Can it really be a plausible proxy of the quality of the outcome of the think/do process?
Thanks Halim, glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the comment. You are right that it is mainly used here to demonstrate that the outcome we care about in a situation is often not a linear combination of the inputs (e.g., if the metric we chose was the sum rather than the product of Tthinking and Tdoing this wouldn't make the point). I'm playing a bit fast and loose with the math here and essentially conclude without justification that the product of these two is something that we care about and is indicative of the quality of the outcome.
All of that said, I think there is something to the notion that there is some optimal sweet spot of the amount of time we should spend thinking/planning before we try something out. And of course we can use the remaining time to run an experiment. The product of those two nicely illustrates this sweet spot effect.
I'll have to think more about whether there is a better justification for using the product as a metric other than simply noting that it makes the point about the nonlinear relationship.
Loved reading this this morning. I've been thinking lately about how we try so hard to point students in the right direction, help ease their path towards learning when in reality it is their struggle (albeit surmountable struggle) that is going to result in the best learning. By letting them "rip," it is allowing them to enter into their own doing AND thinking, rather than just our thinking. And as always, in higher education, I think we all need constant reminders to stop thinking and overthinking so much of the time, so thanks for that!
Thanks Megan. Love this: "allowing them to enter into their own thinking AND doing, rather than just our own thinking." A great way of highlighting the way that "letting it rip" helps to build a community rather than a more transactional form of education.
Great essay, as usual, Josh. My one caution is that we don't need to start with the distinction between doing and thinking to get there. While I agree that a balance is in order, the value I see in prototyping or design thinking in general is that the distinction between thinking and doing collapses and you are mostly thinking about what you doing or doing what you are thinking.
One of the insights of Williams James was to see doing and thinking, or thinking and thinker, as relations rather than as discrete entities. "Let it rip" and a "bias toward action" are quite Jamesian attitudes, which is where you end up. Indeed, I hope more and more of us are teaching from that starting position.
Thanks Rob, this is a great point. I can always count on you to sprinkle some William James into the conversation. Could you point me to a good place to start reading him on this?
I totally agree that thinking vs. doing is a false dichotomy. Probably something here I need to stew on to revise my math to more accurately model what's actually going on :)
I always suggest Pragmatism as the place to start with James. Those essays weave together insights about science, culture, and religion that he developed while writing Principles of Psychology. Principles is rich, dense, and comprehensive, and focused on laying out what we know scientifically about the human mind. Pragmatism distills much of what's in Principles but frames the insights within cultural questions about how to act in a world we are creating as we go. After Pragmatism, its Essays in Radical Empiricism.
Your question reminds me that I need to complete a post I started long ago, a sort of bibliographical essay on James. Since I am not writing for an academic audience, i don't clutter up my writing with a bunch of references. However, I want my readers to read James and the other early pragmatists, so I should really provide some starting places.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll add Pragmatism to the list. And I'll keep my eyes out for your piece on James. Sounds like it would be a valuable intro for many of us in this orbit.
Thank you, Josh. Just what I needed to hear as I contemplate how to get my work out into the world. Let it rip!
BTW...This article and the prototyping mindset you mentioned is also in harmony with Agile principles :)
Thanks Lorraine. Thanks as well for noting the consonance with Agile principles—that's a great angle to consider as well.
If you're looking for some more inspiration, I highly recommend Austin Kleon's book "Show Your Work" which was really influential in my own thinking on these ideas. I think you would enjoy it if you haven't read it yet. Even better, it's a quick and delightful afternoon read! https://www.amazon.com/Show-Your-Work-Austin-Kleon/dp/076117897X
I've actually read it....I think you were the one who first introduced it to me! :)
Sounds about right :)
A student's perspective: when I am doing research, work, or personal projects, there is less of a time constraint so I feel free to take my time iterating, alternating between thinking and doing, ultimately resulting in a better outcome.
However due to the intense workload of a school like Mudd, particularly during the core curriculum, I find I am often in one of two mindsets. The first is "I have three problem sets, a lab report, and a paper due this week so I need to get this done faster" which results in "letting it rip" too hard, doing a disproportionate amount of doing. Sometimes I have been lucky and this approach has just work but other times I get punished because my assignment was not planned out. I am specifically thinking of coding assignments, where the code builds on itself vs. a problem set where each problem can stand alone.
The other extreme that I find myself in is overthinking, because I feel that getting it done in one attempt will save me time.
The reality is that iterating produces the best outcome, but also I feel as though I do not have the bandwidth to do so. At least, not if I want to have some semblance of a social life. Even though iterating is on average better (and I would argue almost always better for learning), another reality is that if I get lucky, it's actually much faster to overthink/not think at all compared to the more balanced approach.
For research or my job, I am generally given longer time frames to do things (e.g. get this done by this conference in two months, get this done by the end of your internship in 10 weeks) which affords me the freedom to alternate. But at school when I am faced with weekly deadlines on top of 50 other things I have to keep track of, the shortcut approach becomes much more enticing.
Thanks Devon, good points here. I appreciate you sharing your experience. I appreciate the color you've added to the two ends of the spectrum where there is either too much doing without thinking and vice versa.
You've put your finger on another important aspect which is fundamental to the prototyping mindset: the importance of iteration. I like to think about the quality of a final product as connected to the number of quality design cycles I put into it.
One wonder I have is about how we might better structure classes to avoid the overwhelm. Sometimes I wonder how much of it is self-imposed by taking on too much (I am so guilty as charged on this). I think that a lot of this is embedded in the culture and expectations and it might be interesting to think about ways to think differently to avoid feeling buried.
Great threads to continue to pull on here!
Wow, I'm really late to the party here :)
> I want to structure my courses to help students embrace failure and cultivate a natural bias toward action.
I hear this sentiment a lot with regards to entrepreneurship, and perhaps it's not that we need to "embrace failure" but redefine what failure is. Let's take my favorite analogy, racing. If I train for a marathon, is it a failure if I hit my "B" goal instead of my "A" goal? Is it a failure if I don't finish but save myself from a catastrophic injury?
Building on that last question, perhaps the only true failure is the result that takes you out of the game. So long as you're still playing, you're still growing and learning and developing. And that's all a win.
Thanks for this post!
It's interesting because I spend a significant amount of time coaching to slow down and think more. One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Einstein; “If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes coming up with solutions.”
There's another concept in Taoism for intentional non action that I love which couples with the Army Ranger adage, "Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast" https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/slow-is-smooth-and-smooth-is-fast
BUT.... Sometimes we need to start doing something to help define the problem better. In the Army, we did our planning and then we do a leader's recon to confirm the lay of the land and then we go and execute.
I also had to just kick off and start writing my book before I had all my thoughts together and I'm glad I did because it allow it to take on a life of it's own.
I really dislike the hubris of overconfident execution. I think it really boils down to the scale of doubt. Pure doubt = Spend more time planning because you haven't defined the problem right
Balanced doubt = Let it rip and adjust
Zero doubt = Spend more time planning because you haven't defined the right problem (yes, inverse from pure doubt intentionally)
But now you've given me an idea for a new essay of my own.