To Avoid Thinking Hard, We Will Endure Anything–Even Pain

> The N-back task is useful because the degree of difficulty can be systematically varied. It requires a fairly naturalistic combination of memory and attention. This is to say it is a good test of our ability to think hard:

That's not what I would consider thinking hard. Usually that would be building up a large mental model of many things and complex relationships, then think about different ways to re-structure it and/or imagine mutating data passing through such a structure.

That experiment setup is something I would not enjoy, and may just take the zap as the task itself is meaningless.

A better experiment would be something that rewards thinking hard--something like a card deck-builder game that can be won for bragging rights.

I notice this all the time in software development. A majority of developers would rather spend months or years doing the obvious (but slow) thing rather than spend a few days thinking hard and then implemented a simple solution instead.

The latest example I noticed is a colleague at work who spent more than a year hand converting thousands of SQL scripts from Oracle to Postgress. Instead of simply parsing the Oracle scripts and auto translate them.

Another example I have seen are developers hand coding messages and message protocols and DB schemas etc. instead of auto generating everything from a declarative spec.

Hot tip: Almost 90% of the code you need in a typical biz applications can be auto generated. Yes it does require that you think hard about the architecture you use. But it is worth it!

A third example I have noticed are developers spending years rewriting their code to work in the cloud, followed by years of work rewriting the code away from the cloud because of cost. We are talking years of wasted work.

A fourth example is a developer painstakingly hand converting a Java protocol to C++ instead of using Java reflection to automate it.

I could go on and on and on. It’s crazy.

It's not the "brainstorming", instead it's the confusing, uncertain, complexities that are known to require extreme concentration and that still may not be enough to accomplish anything at all during the first session.

But you know you need to set aside a potentially lengthy session or nothing at all will be accomplished either.

And if you are not truly prepared for that you know it's not going to come out as good as it could :\

Too often the right thing to do at the time is not start right then.

Interesting.

I genuinely enjoy thinking hard. I also have a much greater-than-normal tolerance for physical pain. I wonder of those two things are connected?