Comments on: Changing Perspectives

By: Bruce Lewin

Bruce Lewin — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 13:41:22 +0000

Hi Steve,

Interesting post I’ve cited this on my own blog in a piece which looks at how relationships can be predicted.

Bruce

By: Value Added HR - Four Groups

Value Added HR - Four Groups — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 13:34:24 +0000

An introduction to 4G - Predicting Relationships

This post is designed to introduce some of the ideas surrounding 4G and its applications. In essence, 4G articulates and predicts relationships (Social Relationships) and culture (Social Groups) in a systematic and logical manner. Also present within 4…

By: Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 13:18:43 +0000

Many times even if a problem can be solved via technology, you don’t need to be the one to implement that technology — someone else can be contracted to do it more cheaply than you could. This is a challenge I’m running into right now. I need to become a lot better at outsourcing tasks even when I have the skills to do them myself. For example, if a certain professional speaker can get paid $7500 for a speech, s/he should focus on that and not do $50/hr technical work. Even if the person is a technical whiz, that technical work should be outsourced, at least to the degree that it allows the speaker to focus on finishing more of the higher-payoff work. It’s not just about money either; you could say that anything a speaker does outside of harvesting, preparing, and communicating ideas should be outsourced, so that the speaker can be as effective as possible.

In game development work, I’d often encounter situations where I’d begin programming a game feature and see that it would take a lot longer to implement than I wanted. I could have just plowed on through, but… The marketing/sales perspective showed me that the feature wasn’t worth the required implementation effort. The design perspective allowed me to change the design to eliminate the need for the feature entirely or to replace it with something easier to implement. That’s one reason I really liked the role of designer-programmer (or even better, designer-programmer-marketer), since you can make multi-perspective decisions quickly and intelligently.

By: Yynatago

Yynatago — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 12:52:27 +0000

Hey Steve! I’m interested in finding out some of the problems you tried solving via a technology perspective, but found it easier to solve from another perspective. Have you got any good examples you’d like to share with us? One that comes to mind is when you focused on marketing your games to get more money rather than spending those hours on more programming. Any other examples?

By: Dwayne Melancon

Dwayne Melancon — Sun, 06 Mar 2005 06:26:22 +0000

Very interesting technique, and well written. In an odd coincidence, I read your post just after I posted on my own blog (http://blog.dwayne.melancon.net/blog/_archives/2005/3/5/400274.html) about what it would be like if there was suddenly a Sarbanes-Oxley Act for how you manage your life.

I found thinking about how I manage my life from that perspective really gave me a lot to think about.

Keep up the great work.

By: Dracos

Dracos — Sun, 06 Mar 2005 02:48:13 +0000

*slips in to the blog* Really just want to comment about your articles for game developers but didn’t see any feedback bit. I’d just like to say that they’re awesome and I appreciate you taking the time to write them and share them for free with the public.

By: Jarred

Jarred — Sat, 05 Mar 2005 11:56:17 +0000

This article is absolutely outstanding! I’ve been using this technique for years, but I was never able to explain it as well as you do. This technique helped me a lot.

Additional things and questions to consider:

What would you do with your life if you were really rich, and had almost none of your current problems? Make a list of things you would do. Then, consider if they are worth doing in your current situation, and if you can do them in your current situation, with your current resources.

When faced with a problem, try to find several solutions for it. Even if at first this seems to be an useless exercise in time your thinking becomes more flexible and you start to see more and better solutions to problems.

About the girlfriend problem:

If you are very overweight, you may think:

1. I’ll lose weight,
2. I’ll get some nice clothes and groom myself
3. I’ll date.

This is WRONG, because it will take you several months to lose weight, and then you will lose focus, you will lose interest. Perhaps you will also feel bad because losing weight makes you feel bad physically, and you won’t feel like going out with girls then.

I know from my experience that it’s much much better to do it like this:

You have 2 obstacles to overcome: your physical looks, and the fact that you don’t socialize. It’s far better to begin with the end - to start by socializing with girls as much as you can.

Try to socialize as much as you can. Talk to girls, etc. Go out. Find ways to meet girls. At first just try to socialize and to talk to as many girls as possible and to find as many ways to meet girls as possible. Don’t hit on them just yet, just talk and socialize. Try to become funny. Etc.

Many girls may reject you for being overweight, but just socializing without losing weight can get you a girlfriend.

However, if you don’t get a girlfriend this way, then you will be VERY motivated to lose weight: “Look, I can talk with these girls, they are very nice, I like them, and if I just lost weight, I could easily get a girlfriend” … so.. you will have a very strong motivation.

This is a general life principle: start with the end.

You want to build a business? It’s often best to just start producing and selling what you want, instead of waiting to build a large factory, and then discovering that in fact there is no demand for your product.