Re: [ESSAY] Accelerate the Singularity by defeating procrastination

From: Brad Paulsen (bradpaulsen@talk2pc.com)
Date: Thu Sep 20 2007 - 03:13:30 MDT


It's been my experience, working in commercial software development for the
last thirty years or so, that there are two types of developer
"personalities." I call them Starters and Finishers. The trick for
successfully managing any software project is to identify who is which and
pair them up accordingly.

Starters are motivated to start but, once they have the concepts nailed and
the design perfected, they loath having to finish the deliverables (Leonardo
da Vinci was a Starter). Finishers are motivated to execute elegant
solutions by developing equally elegant implementations but would rather not
have to come up with the solutions by themselves.

This solves the procrastination problem indirectly because motivation is
everything.

Cheers,

Brad

P.S. I like Ellen DeGeneres's take on procrastination: "Procrastination
isn't the problem, it's the solution. So procrastinate now, don't put it
off."

----- Original Message -----
From: <sl4.20.pris@spamgourmet.com>
To: <sl4@sl4.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2007 12:24 AM
Subject: Re: [ESSAY] Accelerate the Singularity by defeating procrastination

> Some additional thoughts:
>
> I was just reading the past essay "AI and Effective Sagacity" from
> Mitch Howe in this list(http://www.sl4.org/archive/0108/2039.html).
>
> Two quotes:
>
> <quote>
> The poor endurance of Sage, and its desire to rest at an optimum
> lower-stress activity level also sheds light on many kinds of
> procrastination, since the thing you put off doing is often some special
> case that requires a higher Sage activity level.
> </quote>
>
> <quote>
> Therefore, even the most
> high-IQ human may never produce anything new or useful to society if she
> is
> unable or unwilling to regularly put her lanky-but-lazy Sage through its
> paces. The low-IQ underdog may climb to the top of his field because his
> awkward-but-fit Sage is continually running marathons.
> </quote>
>
> In this sense, overcoming your procrastination is in itself a form of
> intelligence augmentation or amplification.
>
> Roland Anderson.
>



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