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Comment by harrall | Hacker News Reader

My biggest complaint about some people is that they measure success by the act of doing and rarely by the result.

If I help someone, I am checking if you no longer need help. If I say I’m going to be there at a certain time, I remember every time I’m late. If I do laundry a certain way so I won’t lose a sock, I make sure I haven’t lost a sock. When I do something, my brain replays me “Oh the last time you did this, you made this mistake. Do you want to try it a different way?”

People read how you are “supposed to do things” and feel good when they do it. If you switch to measuring your work by your result, you learn way faster and also get really good at things.

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You've put into excellent words what I have done my whole life. Intent matters but it isn't sufficient. If you "meant to be on time" but weren't, you failed. Simple as. You don't need to lash yourself about it but too many folk are ready to give themselves a pat on the back for good intentions, or trying but failing, etc.

If you say you're gonna be somewhere, show the fuck up. Anything short is a miss. Failing to account for that makes you an asshole, IMO.

If you’re interested in the subject and want to read more, the concept is commonly called “outcome oriented” vs “process oriented”.

A LOT of workplace conflict arises out of outcome oriented ppl having to work with process oriented people.

I did ceramics for a whole and noticed a common trend.

The creator judges the product compared to their imagining of what they wanted to make. Yhe piece invariably falls short (because our imagination is better than our skillset.)

Everyone else simply looked at the piece objectively. It was either beautiful or not.

I started to look at programs the same way. The criteria for judging my program differs to the criteria for judging other programs.

So for my software I care about architecture, clean code, the language I used, how clever it is.

I judge others by their UI, documentation, support, correctness, intuitiveness etc. I hate when their UI constantly changes. Even small (cosmetic) bugs turn me off.

But my stuff has no docs, the UI is butt ugly, there are some rough edges, but if you avoid the bugs it gives you the right answer (very fast) while consuming less ram, disk, or cpu. And I used new-framework or popular-new-language and runs on any OS etc.

From Ira Glass:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.

But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

I tell this to everyone who will listen. This... paragraph? Statement? Whatever is pure gold.

Quit watching YouTube videos, quit reading tutorials, quit listening to podcasts. The only way you learn is by doing something, and by doing something I mean fucking up doing something. Over, and over, and over.

Just do the thing. That's how you learn. And after you make a whole ton of things that suck, you'll start making a few things that don't.

There's no way around it.

I personally feel this distinction does not apply at the granularity of people and this difference is unrelated to the issue of people who aren't observant.

I am very process-oriented about drawing. The simple act of drawing is fun and I never have a specific goal. I try different mediums and subjects for fun with no actual purpose, but I still gradually improve because of it. But I never have any idea of what I’m going to draw next.

However I am very outcome-oriented about engineering. I enjoy it but nowhere as much as drawing. If something I built has problems, I keep that in mind for the next system. I pick up new things for the sole purpose of being up to date.

But in either way, I won’t repeat something again that never seems to work. That’s the same whether I’m being process-oriented or outcome-oriented.

Well, you must have tried it a few times before making the judgement that it never works, right?

How do you measure results until something is done? It's simply not possible to reliably measure or predict the result of something before it's done, and at best any numbers will be incredibly rough estimates.

The only thing we can control for is the act of doing.

No I mean you measure after.

Some people just don’t seem to measure after though.

This works if you can connect your actions directly with the outcomes. How would would you assess the efficacy of preventative actions whose consequences are delayed and uncertain?

"I think we should X because it will probably contribute to Y."

What if Z happens? You could say "Doing X was pointless - Z happened anyway!" but then you are discounting at least two things:

1. the possibility that the magnitude of Z would be much higher

2. that it's a numbers game: sometimes you lose despite making the right decision

I don't really understand your examples in the context of decision making - they feel more like execution lapses than strategic choices.

We’re not talking about preventative actions.

Choosing to park my car correctly because I used get tickets is a reactive action. Helping someone because they asked for help is a reactive action. Being late and then doing things to stop being late is also reactive.

I’m not talking about preventing hypothetical consequences for events that could happen but have not even happened.

> Choosing to park my car correctly because I used get tickets is a reactive action.

How do you explain someone who chooses to park correctly and has never received a parking ticket?

Why do I need to? I didn’t propose some framework to analyze people who are perfect.

This thread chain is about people who do something and it doesn’t work out.

Could your parking have been better? How so?

If you answered "no" to the above question then you answered wrong. This is true for s/parking/*/ because perfect doesn't exist.

Bravo you are among 0.1% of people who check on your own behavior. 99.9% others just try random stuff until it works and don't want to bear the consequences of their mistakes

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