Counterintuitive thinking
Like all good programmers, I read Paul Graham's essays. One of his more recent ones got a lot of attention, especially these two quotes:
Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.
and
So when you look at something like Reddit and think "I wish I could think of an idea like that," remember: ideas like that are all around you. But you ignore them because they look wrong.
The first is interesting because it's the same sort of principles most of the agile programmers have, but it's the second that mentions what I found insightful about the essay. There's another paragraph in the essay that explains it better:
I'd noticed, of course, that people never seemed to grasp new ideas at first. I thought it was just because most people were stupid. Now I see there's more to it than that. Like a contrarian investment fund, someone following this strategy will almost always be doing things that seem wrong to the average person.
When I read this section, I thought "yeah, but that's the point." Which is why I liked what came next:
As with contrarian investment strategies, that's exactly the point.
Something that I've been interested in lately is the counterintuitive. In a lot of cases, I've found that by doing counterintuitive things, I've had way more success than I had by following everyone else.
There are a few counterintuitive rules of thumb that are particularly interesting:
- "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."
- The success of Ruby on Rails, despite having very strong opinions on how software should be built, (and even discouraging breaking those guidelines)
- Intentionally excluding people from a group often results in more people being interested and eventually joining that group (the "I only want it because I can't have it" principle)
The problem with the counterintuitive is that if it is successful, it often no longer becomes counterintuitive and loses the power of originality it once had. The Red Queen is a great book about this, but I've noticed it in businesses that try to predict market trends (once a trend is identified as a trend, it's exploited until it no longer becomes a trend) and in technology (as Graham outlines). Still, looking for ways in which counterintutive thinking can lead to success will usually, if nothing else, bring you one step ahead of everyone else.