Author Topic: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!  (Read 8700 times)

Offline Endarire

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Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« on: November 14, 2011, 07:06:30 PM »
Work Smarter, Not Harder: The Min-Max Rule!

Further proof that optimization isn't evil, wrong, or bad, but encouraged.

Offline Libertad

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2011, 10:09:49 PM »
Rule 2: Focus on tasks that use your strengths: It’s important for us to know our strengths and to focus on things that play to our strengths. If we get involved with things that we are weak in, we should expect to spend a lot of time and energy but get little to show for it.

Rule 5: Most things don’t need to be good, just good enough: If 80% of the project is done with 20% of the effort, then finishing the work will take an additional 80% of effort. If you do the math, that 80% can be spent on four more additional projects at 80% completion rather than finalizing just one. You can see why it’s valuable to stop at “good enough” if you can get away with it.

Rule 7: Multi-task (only as a last resort!): Although I multi-task from time to time, I am not a big proponent of it, mainly because there are so many chances to abuse it. Not too many tasks can you truly do while doing something else simultaneously, so you tend to switch attention back-and-forth between the two tasks. It can be very inefficient if you constantly switch like this (as described in #4), and the work tends to be shoddy. I usually restrict this to low-level tasks, such as fixing a meal and listening to a podcast at the same time.

Rule 2 is basic rules for character optimization.  Rule 5 encourages reasonable limits.  Rule 7 is an indictment against the Mystic Theurge.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2011, 10:43:04 PM by Libertad »

Offline Childe

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2011, 10:40:07 PM »
Rule 5: Most things don’t need to be good, just good enough: If 80% of the project is done with 20% of the effort, then finishing the work will take an additional 80% of effort. If you do the math, that 80% can be spent on four more additional projects at 80% completion rather than finalizing just one. You can see why it’s valuable to stop at “good enough” if you can get away with it.
I call lazy bullshit on this in many cases. This is the basis of shoddy infrastructure and poor development. I understand it says, "if you can get away with it," but that's just an easy-escape clause for the writer. It's a bad principle in too many situations. Character Optimization, of course, isn't the same as municipal systems, corporate infrastructure, or computer systems, to name some prime examples.
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Offline Libertad

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #3 on: November 14, 2011, 10:43:28 PM »
I call lazy bullshit on this in many cases. This is the basis of shoddy infrastructure and poor development. I understand it says, "if you can get away with it," but that's just an easy-escape clause for the writer. It's a bad principle in too many situations. Character Optimization, of course, isn't the same as municipal systems, corporate infrastructure, or computer systems, to name some prime examples.

Dang, that's what I get for not reading the whole thing!

Yeah, now it doesn't sound so good.

Offline Childe

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #4 on: November 14, 2011, 10:49:11 PM »
Really, #5 is just staggering. Who can afford to just do 80% of their job and let it slide? It makes sense if you know someone else who can do that 20% much faster or better than you, but otherwise, who does it? Do the shoes not need soles, the buildings not need wiring -- what else? If I showed up for work and did 80% of my job (I work in marketing, doing content management, coordinating a secret shopper program, and some other things), and then told my boss that the other 20% was too time-consuming, I'd be fired because without that 20%, the whole thing would be sloppy or never reach the customer.
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Offline Libertad

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #5 on: November 14, 2011, 10:52:37 PM »
Really, #5 is just staggering. Who can afford to just do 80% of their job and let it slide?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UltimateJobSecurity

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Offline Childe

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #6 on: November 14, 2011, 10:54:49 PM »
Really, #5 is just staggering. Who can afford to just do 80% of their job and let it slide?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UltimateJobSecurity

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For the record, I tried really hard not to hate everybody this time.  :banghead
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Offline oslecamo

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #7 on: November 15, 2011, 02:41:27 AM »
Really, #5 is just staggering. Who can afford to just do 80% of their job and let it slide? It makes sense if you know someone else who can do that 20% much faster or better than you, but otherwise, who does it? Do the shoes not need soles, the buildings not need wiring -- what else? If I showed up for work and did 80% of my job (I work in marketing, doing content management, coordinating a secret shopper program, and some other things), and then told my boss that the other 20% was too time-consuming, I'd be fired because without that 20%, the whole thing would be sloppy or never reach the customer.
+1000 to that. Doing only 80% may look very smartish and will indeed save you a lot of time, but then that's why we have space ships worth millions crashing down as fiery comets because of a minor tecnical detail that got wrong/overlooked. Countless people die and rivers of money are wasted every year because some other smartass tought it would be more efficient to just do 80% of his work. It isn't. The 20% is still missing and won't magically fill itself.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2011, 02:43:44 AM by oslecamo »

Offline Agita

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #8 on: November 15, 2011, 05:00:25 AM »
Really, #5 is just staggering. Who can afford to just do 80% of their job and let it slide? It makes sense if you know someone else who can do that 20% much faster or better than you, but otherwise, who does it? Do the shoes not need soles, the buildings not need wiring -- what else? If I showed up for work and did 80% of my job (I work in marketing, doing content management, coordinating a secret shopper program, and some other things), and then told my boss that the other 20% was too time-consuming, I'd be fired because without that 20%, the whole thing would be sloppy or never reach the customer.
+1000 to that. Doing only 80% may look very smartish and will indeed save you a lot of time, but then that's why we have space ships worth millions crashing down as fiery comets because of a minor tecnical detail that got wrong/overlooked. Countless people die and rivers of money are wasted every year because some other smartass tought it would be more efficient to just do 80% of his work. It isn't. The 20% is still missing and won't magically fill itself.
As another example, want to bet this is what the geniuses that neglected to maintain Fukushima for some 40 years in order to save money thought? It might've survived that earthquake had it been at 100%.
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Offline Cubey

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #9 on: November 15, 2011, 07:39:35 AM »
After reading the initial post, I wanted to talk about the social stigma associated with the 80/20 rule - and look, it's even in this thread! That everyone backpedals from any support of the blog is only further proof.

I cannot even count how many times sticking to this rather than being a stubborn bastard would have saved me a lot of time. More often than not, my work was 80% (or a similar figure, but let's stick to that number for simplicity's sake) done after very little time invested in it - and hours later, it was STILL at 80%. And so it was at the end. Because that was my limit and I didn't know when to fold 'em. But we are culturally wired to give our best and never give up, even if it reasonably means that we're losing effort for too little actual result. Maybe it builds character, I don't know. But as a manager of a team, I want it to be productive first and have character second.

Nobody will fire you if you do your job 80% right in 20% of the time. That's because that still leaves me with the other 80% time - which I can do to perform more 80% tasks for a total of 400%. Which the article mentions as the first course of action on what to do with your saved time.

Lastly, that remaining 20% still has to be done indeed. But humans do not exist in vacuum. Someone else on the project can take care of it - someone who is better with the remaining part than you are, and who has plenty of free time now because you did the 80% for them. And if that 80% is the easy part that everyone would like to focus on while the remaining 20% is the hard one and nobody's willing to invest the effort in it - then the 80% wasn't really eighty percent, was it? Just because it seemed like the bulk of work doesn't mean it was.
The only problem here is if you leave the fact that this 20% still has to be done unnoticed. Others may assume you're 100% finished already, so good communication is key.

This is a good article, you have to just approach it from an understanding point of view. Our brains have been culturally hard-wired to automatically reject it, so of course the "my car/power plant/shoes gonna explode!" argument found many supporters - despite being totally out of place, an illogical strawman.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2011, 07:43:00 AM by Cubey »

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #10 on: November 15, 2011, 10:14:33 AM »
Nobody will fire you if you do your job 80% right in 20% of the time. That's because that still leaves me with the other 80% time - which I can do to perform more 80% tasks for a total of 400%. Which the article mentions as the first course of action on what to do with your saved time.
If I write four programs that each are only 80% complete, it's as good as I hadn't written a single one, as they won't be working with just 80% done.

Lots of people have "almost finished" works, but those are still stalled in life because nobody ever finished the remaining 20%.

Lastly, that remaining 20% still has to be done indeed. But humans do not exist in vacuum. Someone else on the project can take care of it - someone who is better with the remaining part than you are, and who has plenty of free time now because you did the 80% for them.
Humans don't exist in a vacuum indeed, but if it's your job to do X, then you're expected to do 100% of X. And other people on your project surely have their duties. If you're throwing your work at them and still geting fully paid at it, you're sucking them of their effort for nothing in return. I'll admit it's highly profitable for you, but I believe most people would consider than unethical at best.

If you do offer them something in return (like take care of jobs they don't like and you do), then you're piling extra work on yourself and you're not just doing 80% anymore.

And if that 80% is the easy part that everyone would like to focus on while the remaining 20% is the hard one and nobody's willing to invest the effort in it - then the 80% wasn't really eighty percent, was it? Just because it seemed like the bulk of work doesn't mean it was.

Thing is, a lot of people will be easily misguided in that department. A project may look "80% done", and then problems start appearing out of nowhere and you need to extend deadlines or work extra hours.

If the person who started the project meanwhile ditched you "because it was already 80% done", then you're in for a world of hurt because of them being a smartass, as you need to go back and review (it not redo) everything that had been done until then.

That's why works have assignments. If you think the workload could be better divided among the workers then discuss it with your boss. But if you go around claiming you did four projects in the time of one when you only pulled it off was by draining the time of four other poor smucks that got fooled by your sweet talks, you don't really have anything to be proud off.

The only problem here is if you leave the fact that this 20% still has to be done unnoticed. Others may assume you're 100% finished already, so good communication is key.
What if you aren't good at communications? The article specifically says to don't waste time with your weak points. Would this mean that "gasp" you have to put some actual hard effort here and there like talking with that coworker you personally dislike?

This is a good article, you have to just approach it from an understanding point of view. Our brains have been culturally hard-wired to automatically reject it, so of course the "my car/power plant/shoes gonna explode!" argument found many supporters - despite being totally out of place, an illogical strawman.
In a more personal scale, I've seen plenty of people geting screwed because their medics decided to just do 80% of the treatments and examinations they were suposed to do. That would allow them to see more clients and cash in more, at the cost of leting plenty of problems slip by and get worst. And then if you tried to bring other medic in to fill the missing 20%, they would have to start almost from scratch because the 80% job done would be mostly irrelevant now that the problems had time to fester (if they had been correctly diagonized to begin with, doing just 80% of your work is funny like that).

Civilian construction is filled with this, only 80% of the budget for the building, and the remaining 20% cashed in for the builder's pockets. Nevermind that the building now has common water and energy shortages and isn't properly isolated because they used second-grade materials to save the 20%.

And let's not talk about one handy men my grandmother hired for her home that wanted to actually charge more than the tabled price if she wanted him to actualy do 100% of the work, instead of some 80% quality patchjob.

So no, it's not wrong that our culture "hard-wires" us in doing our jobs (which we're being paid to do BTW). Because plenty of tasks are unpleasant and boring, but they still need to get done for society to work and advance.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2011, 10:32:42 AM by oslecamo »

Offline Cubey

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #11 on: November 15, 2011, 12:17:33 PM »
If a "good enough" work still causes problems - a mostly done car malfunctions, a mostly done treatment creates complications, etc, then it was not good enough.
Good enough means the base is finished, all the essential components of the project are there and working good. All that remains are extra doodads. And trust me, there are a LOT of jobs where your work comes with extra doodads, set up by unreasonable bosses.

If a work is not mostly done until it's at 100%, like with medical examples given - then it's one of these situations where you cannot afford to not give it your all. You know, the situations the article HAS GIVEN AN EXCUSE FOR, an excuse which everyone in this thread dismissed as just a convenient escape route and then argued solely with examples it would disqualify. Talk about strawman.

As a side note, I find your example where a building is made with 80% budget while the remaining 20% goes to the workers' pockets to be especially offensive. If you think that's what I'm arguing for, you're missing my point by so much, it's not even in the same country.

Also, the most important part of my post - the one which validates the rest of it, has not been addressed by you. This article does not advocate to do a "good enough" work in little time and then slack off. It advocates you do good enough in little time and then use the rest of the time to work on other projects. Here's an example:

If you think the 80/20 figure is too unrealistic, let's go with 60/40 instead. You and your co-worker have one project to do each. If everyone just does their part, it takes 100% time. But if you finish 60% of the first project in 40% time, and 60% of the second (in another 40% time), then the co-worker has only 80% to do - while you used up only 80% of your time. It's a 25% increase in efficiency.
Do note, if the remaining 40% per project, the one which would take you 60% time to complete, takes 60% time for your co-worker as well - then it's obviously not 40% now, is it? It's only the minority if someone on the project is good with it, rather than being the sad leftovers that nobody wants to pick up because it takes too much effort - but that they have to be done anyway.

The problems with implementing this idea in real life is that human beings are bad at judging. Therefore often:
-Workers have trouble distinguishing what are the important, essential parts of the project, and also what are they good with and what they are not.
-Bosses think an efficient worker is slackingo off, because he's not giving it all 100% of the time.
But if these obstacles are defeated, what we have is a vastly more efficient AND less stressful workplace - one which server well for workers and clients alike.

Offline Agita

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #12 on: November 15, 2011, 12:45:47 PM »
The problems with implementing this idea in real life is that human beings are bad at judging. Therefore often:
-Workers have trouble distinguishing what are the important, essential parts of the project, and also what are they good with and what they are not.
-Bosses think an efficient worker is slackingo off, because he's not giving it all 100% of the time.
But if these obstacles are defeated, what we have is a vastly more efficient AND less stressful workplace - one which server well for workers and clients alike.
This, I think is the main problem. A lot of systems would work wonderfully if people weren't stupid. People apply the principle in cases where it is inapplicable all the time, and that is what most of the detractors here (including myself) seem to object to the most. You'll note that noone complained about any of the other six outlined principles, only this one, because it's the most liable to cause problems when the qualifier is ommited (you cannot, in fact, get away with not doing all the work) or applied wrong (you can get away with it in the sense that nobody notices... until something goes wrong with the part that you didn't do).
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Offline kamikasei

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #13 on: November 15, 2011, 12:54:12 PM »
Do note, if the remaining 40% per project, the one which would take you 60% time to complete, takes 60% time for your co-worker as well - then it's obviously not 40% now, is it?
I think this is the big problem - that's not obviously the case at all. It depends on what the percentages are measuring, and if they're measuring the time the job will take then any sort of 80/20 rule is unlikely to be useful. More likely you're talking about requests in a queue, or items on a feature list, or lines of code in an estimated total required.

The important message to take from "80% of the work takes 20% of the time!" is "once you've got 80% of the work done, budget four times as long to finish the job properly" - important, in my view, because of how often the inverse mistake is made, people looking at the 80% that gets done quickly and easily and not allowing enough time or resources for the fiddlier stuff, or thinking that individuals or teams who do that 80% work on many projects are industrious go-getters who deserve more resources to let them mostly-do more projects while the ones trying to actually get those unfinished projects ready for actual use are shiftless malingerers who take forever over the tiniest tasks.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #14 on: November 15, 2011, 01:22:05 PM »
If a "good enough" work still causes problems - a mostly done car malfunctions, a mostly done treatment creates complications, etc, then it was not good enough.
Good enough means the base is finished, all the essential components of the project are there and working good. All that remains are extra doodads. And trust me, there are a LOT of jobs where your work comes with extra doodads, set up by unreasonable bosses.
If your boss is so unreasonable, not doing the jobs he asks for will only get things worst if you ask me.

If a work is not mostly done until it's at 100%, like with medical examples given - then it's one of these situations where you cannot afford to not give it your all. You know, the situations the article HAS GIVEN AN EXCUSE FOR, an excuse which everyone in this thread dismissed as just a convenient escape route and then argued solely with examples it would disqualify. Talk about strawman.
What excuse? "If you can get away with it"? That's just SCREAMING to be abused! If the patient stays healthy for a couple of weeks before the complications due to an incomplete treatment start, you can probably get away with it. If you carefully drain resources from your colleagues and then get promoted while your colleagues are fired (because they couldn't do their own jobs as they were helping you), then you got away with it. If a massive corporation goes bankrupt because you only did 80% of the administration work and you jump out with your golden parachute and then use your connections to become a consultor, while thousands of other people got fired, you got away with it.

One could say plenty of people out there already follow that principle, no doubt of that.

As a side note, I find your example where a building is made with 80% budget while the remaining 20% goes to the workers' pockets to be especially offensive. If you think that's what I'm arguing for, you're missing my point by so much, it's not even in the same country.
In case it wasn't clear enough, I meant they spent only 80% of the budget because they only met 80% of the final specifications of the building, leading to a multitude of problems later on.

If they could make a 100% quality building with 80% budget, my hat off to them. But in 99% of the cases, they spent just 80% of the budget because they cut corners here and there, and somebody will have to pay for it later on.

Also, the most important part of my post - the one which validates the rest of it, has not been addressed by you. This article does not advocate to do a "good enough" work in little time and then slack off. It advocates you do good enough in little time and then use the rest of the time to work on other projects. Here's an example:

If you think the 80/20 figure is too unrealistic, let's go with 60/40 instead. You and your co-worker have one project to do each. If everyone just does their part, it takes 100% time. But if you finish 60% of the first project in 40% time, and 60% of the second (in another 40% time), then the co-worker has only 80% to do - while you used up only 80% of your time. It's a 25% increase in efficiency.

Do note, if the remaining 40% per project, the one which would take you 60% time to complete, takes 60% time for your co-worker as well - then it's obviously not 40% now, is it? It's only the minority if someone on the project is good with it, rather than being the sad leftovers that nobody wants to pick up because it takes too much effort - but that they have to be done anyway.
Such a shame that the article says nothing on that. It actually encourages you to do 60% of your work in 40% time and dump the remaining on your colleage, even if he's no better at it, as long as you can get away with it. Not hard if you say the right words and throw the right smoke screens. So you do 60% of your job and somebody else does 140%, profiting you at the expense of others. Unfortenely quite common all over the world and History.

The problems with implementing this idea in real life is that human beings are bad at judging. Therefore often:
-Workers have trouble distinguishing what are the important, essential parts of the project, and also what are they good with and what they are not.
-Bosses think an efficient worker is slackingo off, because he's not giving it all 100% of the time.
But if these obstacles are defeated, what we have is a vastly more efficient AND less stressful workplace - one which server well for workers and clients alike.
I'll have to agree with Agita here. Most people are naturally selfish and/or greedy, at least when it comes with non-family. It's not something you can evade, it's something you have to deal with.

And the article tells you to abuse just that," if you can get away with it." It's precisely the kind of phrase used for taking advantage of others when the oportunity presents itself.

Kamikasei also rises an important point, that you can never surely know just how much time you'll need to finish something, let alone knowing how much time somebody else would take to finish something you started.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2011, 01:27:36 PM by oslecamo »

Offline Cubey

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #15 on: November 15, 2011, 01:27:10 PM »
Could it be that my interpretation is too generous? I hope that this article is aimed at normal, hard-working people - telling them to be less self-sacrificing and work more efficiently, while still getting the job done. Rather than what you say, at clever assholes who want to do as little work as possible and delegate the unpleasant rest at others. Or just covering it up.

Offline veekie

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #16 on: November 15, 2011, 03:11:07 PM »
In that case it should make them stop at 100%(completeness and functionality). Overdoing the irrelevant details is 110%.
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Offline awaken_D_M_golem

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #17 on: November 16, 2011, 06:03:11 PM »

Rule 2 is basic rules for character optimization.  Rule 5 encourages reasonable limits. 

** Rule 7 is an indictment against the Mystic Theurge.

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Re: Non-gamers even believe in min-maxing!
« Reply #18 on: November 18, 2011, 11:33:25 AM »
A real prime example of the detrimental nature of the "least effort" clause, is the current state of academic paper production. Many times, your resumé isn't judged by the quality of your papers, but by the *quantity* of papers you published, so it's commonplace to see people sharing a name in their papers with someone who didn't actually wrote a single phrase of that work, just to have the favor repaid when that someone else publishes a paper, therefore doubling your "productivity" for the same amount of effort. Then there are the rewrites and reinterpretational papers, that take as little effort as possible, but still count there on your resumé. More perceptive employers will of course check the contents of papers you publish, but really, many just look: Candidate A = 10 papers Candidate B = 100 papers, and just hire B, even though Candidate A has had his work cited in articles that appeared in Nature or other magazines of importance. In practice, this makes the overall quality of academic papers drop, as graduates try to move with the wave, so to speak, by publishing as many articles as they possibly can, so as to stay competitive on the market.

It's frikken stupid, really.
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