Positive Feedback

Last time I wrote about discipline.

Discipline runs on willpower, and willpower is finite. Only positive feedback keeps it going.

And positive feedback doesn't just help with discipline — it moves projects too.

You don't need to plan a project perfectly up front. You need to close one positive feedback loop first.

It starts out as a pile of crap. But once the loop is closed, the feedback is snow: the crap rolls down the hill, and it ends up an enormous snowball. Who's going to remember what was at the centre?

I've said this on Weibo before — one of my great failings is wanting to design something perfectly and build it perfectly, which means it doesn't move at all for ages. The effort to make something perfect and the effort to make something barely usable are not on the same order of magnitude. So the projects on my desk now get split into phases: what ships in phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four.

Break through the heavens; face fate head-on.