What do you do when you can't find the simple linear path forward? How do you create momentum from a state of being completely stuck? Learn how to reframe the problem, create momentum, and start the path forward.
Hunter Powers: Welcome to the ONE. I'm your host, Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, D.C. Proper, Washington, D.C. And today's one idea is how to NOT be successful, the value of bad ideas. Have you ever been stuck on what to do next? You're trying to be successful in something. It can literally be anything. But you can't figure out, "What do I do next? What is the next step?"
Hunter Powers: This is often a symptom of hard problems, and more often than not, hard, abstract problems. There is no obvious, simple, linear path from where you are today and where you are trying to go. And you, in this context, could be you, could be a company, could be someone else, could even be an object, you're trying to move an object from one place to another, but there's no simple, linear path. You're stuck. You can't figure out how to be successful. But there is a strategy that can help get you moving.
Hunter Powers: When confronted with this situation, the first goal needs to be to get moving towards the goal. Not to achieve the goal, but to get moving towards the goal. You need some momentum. And so, you should rephrase the problem. Instead of, "How do I achieve this very challenging, abstract goal?" To, "How do I start moving towards this very abstract, hard goal?" So we've really just redefined success. And we'll come back to the original success criteria of meeting this goal.
Hunter Powers: But for now, the goal is just to be on a path to get closer to it. Now, you still might be stuck. That's not necessarily enough to get you going. But there is something rather significant in that small tweak to our goal. And that is that the evaluation criteria has been lowered a great deal. It no longer needs to achieve the goal. It only needs to get you just the tiniest bit closer.
Hunter Powers: And here is where the value of bad ideas comes in. So there's this thing that you want, and you can't figure out, "How do I get it?" But could you figure out how NOT to get it? What are the things that you wouldn't want to do? What would be the worst possible plan towards getting this goal? And you could even take this further and just say, "What is a plan, related to this goal or not related to this goal? Just, what could a possible plan be for anything?" Think of the plan you have for some other idea or project, something that does have a simple, linear path. What is that plan?
Hunter Powers: And so, you take this bad plan, these bad ideas, and you make that your plan. "This is how I will achieve my new goal." And you're probably saying that that makes no sense. That is a bad idea. That is how to NOT be successful. Which is the one idea for today. And you're right. However, now that you have a bad idea, and you come up with an idea that's a little bit better than that. Doesn't have to be remarkably better, just a little bit better. And then once you come up with that idea, the same question. And you come up with another idea that's a little bit better.
Hunter Powers: And so this is an iterative approach to solving hard, abstract problems. And just like how you need to create motion, or momentum, towards solving your larger problem, you need to create momentum towards creating a plan. And this strategy creates that momentum. By starting with an idea that probably makes no sense, that no one would ever endorse, it becomes rather easy to suggest something that's just a little bit better, and a little bit better, and a little bit better, and a little bit better, and a little bit better, until you have something. Something that's, "Well, there's no easy leap to get just a little bit better than that."
Hunter Powers: And so, you start there. You use that, which hopefully is a rather simple, linear plan to get you started, to create the motion, to create the momentum. This concept is fairly common in software engineering, the field I come from, where we have the concept of a straw-man proposal.
Hunter Powers: A misconception about software engineering is that when engineers or programmers are presented with an idea, some new product, some new piece of software, some new feature that is to be implemented, that they know more or less exactly how to do it and they just need to sit at their computers and type in the codes that enable this functionality to happen. The reality is, they often do not know how to do the thing that's being requested of them. Depending on their experience, there's often some degree of pattern-matching to previous experiences, where it's like, "Okay, you're kind of asking me a part of this problem and a part of this problem and a part of this problem."
Hunter Powers: But, chances are, they've never solved this exact problem. This is a hard, abstract problem, and so they need to take an iterative approach towards a solution, and one of those approaches is the use of the straw-man proposal. Supposedly, this originated in the Department of Defense in relation to their software engineering efforts, where they had a concept for requirements for projects coming out, and the first set of requirements were called the straw-man requirements. And then, the next iteration was the wooden-man, followed by the tin-man. There was a sand-man, there was a pebble-man, stone-man. I think there was a steel-man. But the idea being that the first set of requirements, which is their plan for what they're going to implement, were very, very weak. And they know that they're probably wrong, but they have to get started.
Hunter Powers: And I take this idea one step further and say, "Not only are the first set of requirements going to be weak, they can actually be bad." If weak is too hard, then go to bad. What should they not be? Let's put a bad set of requirements up, because we need to engineer some easy task to get us to weak requirements, so that then we can keep on iterating.
Hunter Powers: Let's do one real world example. You want to build a relationship with a new person. This could be a person that you want to work with, or this could be a person that you want a personal relationship with. But you have no idea how to get this done. It is a hard, abstract problem. And so, we need a straw-man proposal, or a bad idea. How would we not do this thing?
Hunter Powers: Well, let's think of some ideas. We could write them a letter, tell them how horrible they are at all the things that we think we value about them. We could take out an ad and point out how much we dislike this person. We could hire their worst enemy, or become friends with their worst enemy. We could research things that they like by searching for them on Google, and then determining the exact opposite of those things and surrounding ourselves with them. We could agree to not contact them for the next 12 months.
Hunter Powers: And so, we take all of these ideas and we write them down, and we're basically going to figure out what they don't like, and we're going to do that, and we're going to figure out who their enemies are and we're going to become friends with them, and we're not going to actually contact them at all, and this is our plan towards building this relationship. And this is a horrible plan. This is the how to NOT be successful at establishing this relationship.
Hunter Powers: But now, can you come up with a plan that's better than that? I hope so. You probably also noticed that doing the opposite of many of those things might actually be a good plan. But we now have our starting point. So maybe the plan after that is that I'm going to do some research online and try to identify areas that they're interested in. I'm going to learn a little bit about those areas, and then I'm going to reach out to them and suggest a conversation about one of those areas that I think that their expertise, knowledge or experience in this area could be of a lot of benefit, and I was wondering if we could have a casual conversation about it.
Hunter Powers: Maybe that's not a great plan, and that doesn't necessarily get us to our goal, but it's a start. It creates some momentum, some motion. And now I've gone from having this very hard, abstract problem that I have no idea how to accomplish, to getting started. And what will likely happen is, after that conversation, or whatever that first successful beat is, more ideas will come. More information will come. And the next step will start to become clear.
Hunter Powers: And eventually, there will be a simple, linear path from where we are today and where we are trying to go. And the misnomer is that you see that path from the beginning. Seeing that path from the beginning is actually quite rare. But what you can see from the beginning is the path to seeing the path, and that's the point of this. Understanding the iterative nature, and by understanding that iterative nature, understanding that you can start below zero. You don't even have to start at the bottom. You can dig a hole. Start down there in that hole. Because the benefit of that is, you know how to get out of the hole. You can hack your way towards momentum.
Hunter Powers: And I think we all know that, once we have momentum on something, everything else becomes easier. We certainly have the representation in physics, the coefficient of static friction, the idea that an object that isn't moving, it requires more energy applied to this object to get it to start moving than it does to keep it moving. And so, in the beginning of you trying to solve this problem, you have to overcome that coefficient of static friction. How do you get your progress moving towards this goal? Get yourself, really, moving towards this goal?
Hunter Powers: And the insight here is that you can hack it. And you hack it by moving yourself backwards, and then bringing yourself back to this point, but bringing yourself back to this point with momentum. Because, at the moment, you have stopped. And that is your one idea for today, how to NOT be successful, or the value of bad ideas. Creating momentum from nothing by taking a step back and getting a running start into your future.
Hunter Powers: I am Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, as we say in the city, D.C. Proper. Washington, D.C. And until next time.