Hit the road

A. Life Challenges and Systems

Your life continuously presents new challenges. And your success directly depends on your ability to meet these challenges. You can choose various approaches – react on problems as they come, appeal to supernatural forces or seek for advise.

But how many times

• you didn’t understand why thing happen and what to do
• you found that reality and challenges are more complex than they seem
• your solutions create new problems and make things worse

Welcome to the messy world of complex systems that encompass your life and compose our Universe.

1. You can be the master of your life if you can understand and influence systems involved in your challenges. That means that you should become the Master of Systems Thinking.

• what problems should you solve?
• should you reframe the problem?
• what would be an ideal solution?
• what systems should be considered?
• what belongs to these systems?
• what is out of scope?

2. Model – come up with a model that describe the problem and a preferable solution

• what is the structure of the involved system?
• what are goals and known system behavior?
• what system parameters can be influenced?
• what can be a solution – the system of responses and actions?
• what outcomes can be predicted?

• target feedback loops - amplify stale beneficial, minimize unstable harmful feedback (e.g. increase customer feedback, reduce team interruptions)
• stability - to remain unchanged, system should change: the system should effectively respond to various situations – even unknown!
• interconnections - you cannot change only one thing and you cannot change everything.
• beware of opposing reaction - The System always Kicks Back (Le Chatelier’s principle)
• avoid new systems - they always cause new problems
• evolve existing working solutions - it is better strategy than introducing new complex solutions
• the first solution is imperfect - be ready to scrap it after learning and building better models
• probe / stress test - try to run trial to assess impact of the changes before committing to intervention
• design signal / sensory systems for measuring result of intervention and establish clear information paths

4. Review results of intervention

• how well did intervention work?
• did you meet challenge or at least improved situation?
• did you create new problems?
• are you sure you’ve got objective and full information?
• have you got feedback from all participants?

5. Learn – analyze the gap between model and reality. Why did it work this way?

• studying mistakes and bugs
• evaluating prior predictions
• assessing assumptions
• dispelling delusions and biases
• exposing flaws of the model
• detaching yourself from the system for better perspective
• realizing real system goals, functions and interests (for humans)

Go to step 1 of the dance until you like results or run out of time and energy.

Finally remember: “Today solutions are tomorrow problems” [Fifth Discipline]

E. Circle of Influence

5. Focus on important challenges that you can really meet.

Proactive people focus time and energy on things they can control (Circle of Influence) instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no control (Circle of Concern). – Stephen Convey

1. You can be the master of your life if you can understand and influence systems involved in your challenges. That means that you should become the Master of Systems Thinking.
2. Ability to predict and influence future is the most important skill of the Master of Systems Thinking
3. Inability to understand systems is the most serious obstacle for the Master of Systems Thinking. Unfortunately, most systems are complex and the master will not understand them.
4. You can still master complex systems if you realize that you cannot change complex systems as you wish and get predictable results.
5. Focus on important challenges that you can really meet.

You cannot change Universe laws and can barely affect economical situation, but you can make a difference for your projects and life by becoming the Master of Systems Thinking and mastering systems under your control.

What is the best strategy for an effective developer – innovation, imitation or integration? Should you introduce new creative solutions, adapt other people ideas or just integrate existing components?

Software Development is an exciting intellectual endeavor without physical barriers. It is easy to start innovating – come up with new ideas and quickly submerge into their implementation. And I don’t mean here fundamental breakthroughs. I consider as innovation building of any non-trivial solution that is not directly stemmed from Google search results, development resources or available examples. And certainly, I pose the dilemma – innovate or not innovate – to skillful developers who are quite capable to innovate and who enjoy meaningful creative work.

Discount Machine

Lets start from a tournament organized by Kevin Laland of the University of St Andrews to find out what strategy works best to gain maximum pay-off:

• innovation - a new behaviour randomly acquired by individual learning;
• observation - a new behaviour acquired by learning from others or imitation;
• exploitation - using a previously learned behaviour to gain pay-off.

The participant had to build a strategy that their virtual agents would use to decide between these options in a computer-generated world. The challenge was to create the strategy that generated the most successful agents.

Therefore, a tournament showed that the best strategy is keeping up-to-date by learning what others are doing and using their successful solutions most of the time.

Strategies

You have three main strategies for approaching a new problem in software development

1. Integrate into the system existing software product, component or service – commercial or open source (for example, Payment Gateway as PayPal, Blog Engine as WordPress, CMS as Drupal, UI Components as Telerik and so on)
2. Imitate good enough solutions and adapt to your problem (Architecture Patterns as MVC, available code examples and guidelines as MSDN, borrow ideas from blogs, open source projects, Starter Kits, SDK and so on)
3. Innovate and create new solutions or make significant improvements to existing approaches

	Integrate	Imitate	Innovate
Time to market	Fast, if effort to integrate with other system components is low	Slow, but predictable, if not many hidden pitfalls or adaptation problems are encountered	Unpredictable as any innovative work
Cost	Low, if components are reasonably priced and not much integration work needed	More expensive and depends on complexity and adaptation effort	Unpredictable
System integrity (with system architecture and environment)	Acceptable if new components don’t screw and over-complicate core architecture	Good, if developers adapt ideas to existing architecture	Solution is built to match core architecture and customer needs
Required Expertise	Not much specialized expertise is required, usually external support is available for integration	Good developers can effectively adopt good ideas that are explained well	High level expertise, creativity and specialized knowledge are required for good innovative solution
Control over code and future development	Little control and you are on mercy of external developers	Good control if ideas are applied well and not over-engineered	Full control
Competitive advantage and uniqueness	Not much for the standard solution that many can use	Depends on quality and creativity in adaptation	Innovation is an excellent opportunity to gain advantage
Maintenance, support and improving capabilities	Work is outsourced to dedicated external developers who fix, support and improve the product	Your effort is supported in original source of ideas if you are lucky	Completely your own effort
Learning curve, tacit knowledge, help	Usually supported by help, tutorials, training and community involvement	Partially supported by original source, however can drift far as the result of internal implementation	Should be covered by you to enable effective support and future development by existing and new developers

(*) Disclosure: I should confess that the table above has some assumptions. I assume that external components for integration have good quality, work as advertised and are backed by solid support and team . Also, I assume that internal developers involved in implementation have good skills and experience. They follow good practices and are motivated to do great job and know what they are doing. I fully realize that life is not simple, and my assumptions could be completely wrong and this would change the table and the whole game :)

• Improvement and simplification of the system design to make it easier to evolve and support
• Removing technical constraints and solving technical challenges to make the system faster, more responsive and reliable
• Introduction of important business features where no standard solutions exists
• Significant improvement of users experience
• Reducing cost of development and support

• Developing system features or properties that are not required
• Building alternatives for good available solutions (reinventing the wheel)
• Playing with interesting ideas without customer awareness

The Effective Way To Build Software System

1. Understand purpose of the system, essence of customer needs and desired outcome
2. Break down the system into components and research if
   1. standard solutions exist (for integration)
   2. implementation ideas exist (for imitation)
   3. innovation is required
3. Can you change needs and requirements? Transform customer needs and architecture ideas to minimize development effort
   1. by moving from innovation to imitation strategy
   2. by moving from imitation to integration strategy
4. Evaluate each component from the system and business perspective
   1. Should you avoid integration and use imitation if:
      • System integrity under the threat and the component is part of the system core
      • Control over code and future development is required
      • Competitive advantage and uniqueness are important
   2. Should you still go with innovation because of unresolved contradictions, challenging and unmet needs?
5. Build prototypes clearly separated from mainstream development to confirm selected strategy

Becoming an effective software developer

1. Systematically study other solutions in your area of specialization (at least a couple in a month – understand strengths, weaknesses, high-level architecture and interesting tricks)
2. Learn concepts and language of your business domain to be able to understand customers and shape their needs together
3. Enhance abilities to find and brainstorm alternatives (improve techniques, make them essential part of your process)
4. Become an expert in Google search and fast evaluation (no kidding, these skills become very important for any modern developer)
5. Master rapid prototyping, apply solutions in practice and seek for rapid feedback (answer in short time if proposed solution is good, learn and correct if you made a mistake)
6. Develop a holistic view and knowledge of the system, infrastructure and environment (understand subsystems, connections, integration options and trade-offs)
7. Keep up with latest software development trends, technologies and approaches (subscribe to blogs, magazines and other sources)

1. Achieve deep specialization in your core technical area and business domain (extensive experience and deep knowledge are great assets for innovator)
2. Continuously develop creativity and problem solving (the post about creative problem solving)
3. Enhance architecture and fundamental programming expertise based on own practice and ideas from others
4. Master Evolutionary and Domain Driven Design

• Improving relationship
• Flying to space to be the first man on Mars
• Overweighting and health problems
• Winning bodybuilding or beauty contest.
• Procrastination
• Learning new technology
• Making more money
• Building next Facebook or Twitter
• Raising kids
• Boosting career growth
• Becoming Olympic champion or billionaire
• Making the world a better place
• Planning a dream vacation
• Seeking for happiness…

We often are inconsistent in solving problems and cannot find a good solution. This post focus on effective and creative problem solving by offering systematic approach and wide range of techniques.

Beginning

There are four main elements of Creative Problem Solving:

1. Problem - any question or matter involving doubt, uncertainty or difficulty
2. Solution - set of actions that solves a problem
3. You – your knowledge, beliefs, emotions and abilities
4. Context -forces, people and environment

And there are seven strategies:

1. Knowing - you know how to solve the problem in practice
2. Copying – copy and adapt working solutions
3. Logic - follow reasoning and step-by-step approach to find a solution
4. Lateral thinking - solving problems through an indirect and creative approach
5. Psychology - use intuition and subconscious to pop a solution
6. Dialogue - engage brains of other people
7. Trial and errors - make guess, verify and refine by experiments

Before you start finding a solution, you should board the problem – understand and accept it.

Boarding a problem in 3 steps

Step 1. What is the core of the problem?

• Essentials - What are symptoms, facts, key points, players, context?
• Root Conflict - Why is this a problem? What is the core of a problem? What is not a problem? Ask 5 whys
• Clarity - What is still unknown and unclear? Do I need more information?

• Feasible - Is the problem real and you can solve it? Continue by asking critical questions about the problem
  • Is it logical? Does the problem make sense for the rational part of my brain?
  • Is it subjective? Is it possible that problem exist only in my mind?
  • What are emotions and feelings? How do they contribute to my perception of the problem?
  • Is the problem based on hard facts and proven information?
• Fit - Why is it necessary to solve? Should I really solve this problem based on my
  • needs
  • priorities
  • values and principles
  • resources (time / money)
  • potential benefits / risks?

• Purpose - what is the purpose of solving the problem?
• Stretch - should I solve bigger problem?
• Squeeze - should I solve only part of the problem?
• Model - what are elements and parameters of the problem? What are forces?
• Question - use CIA Phoenix checklist of problem solving questions

Ideal solution

• Find contradictions that can be resolved - I want more money, but also want to work less and impossible - I have to be in two places in the same time. Use them as a creative stimulus to define an ideal solution.
• Understand when you can stop, what is good enough outcome and how much time, energy and money you are willing to spend on resolving a problem
• What are potential harms and cost of the solution?

Knowing

1. Is the situation same?
2. Should you improve or change something from your previous solution?
3. Can you come up with better alternatives?

Copying

1. Can you trust sources? Do they provide full unbiased information?
2. Do you pay attention not only to glorious outcomes of the solution, but also to problems?
3. Can you use this solution for your specific problem, situation and abilities?

Logic

Reorganize - break down the problem into elements or parameters and manipulate them. You can use SCAMPER method defined by Bob Eberle. (Example: a problem with failing relationship)

• S - Substitute - components, materials, people
  • substitute something in your behavior or find another partner
• C - Combine - mix, combine with other assemblies or services, integrate
  • start doing some things together
• A - Adapt - alter, change function, use part of another element
  • change your home responsibilities
• M - Modify - increase or reduce in scale, change shape, modify attributes (e.g. colour)
  • communicate more often, change your tone
• P - Put to another use
  • use your partner as a tennis or chess opponent, engage as an assistant in fishing
• E - Eliminate - remove elements, simplify, reduce to core functionality
  • separate or stop doing things that annoy your partner
• R - Reverse - turn inside out or upside down
  • say opposite to what you said before

• Think about a specific topic you want to cover. Find out how people start blogs in general, what works and what are common pitfalls. Apply to your topic and situation to grow successful blog.

Analyze Variations (Example: Develop and promote new Content Management System)

1. Parameters of a problem - list variations, combine differently
   • cost, time, features, people, quality, vendors, etc; time vs features, in-house vs outsourcing, quality vs speed
2. Attributes list - list attributes of the object (or problem) and try to improve them (Attributes analysis, Morphological Analysis)
   • architecture, design, performance, scalability, security, reusability, networking
3. Matrix - create related keywords in main areas, mix and match keywords to form new ideas (Leonardo da Vinci Ideabox)
   • solutions (blog, company website, e-commerce, news, social connections), needs (inform, advertise, sell, support), markets (individuals, companies, non-profit, schools, small social groups), technologies (web, video, mobile, aggregation), services (hosting, installation, support, training). For example, what could be opportunity in combination: blog + inform + schools + video + hosting

Change Context / Process / Forces (Example: Career advance)

1. Force field analysis - maximize positive forces, minimize negative (Force-Field Analysis)
   • find how to use your strengths more and avoid negative impact of weaknesses
2. Substitute rules, principles, people, places
   • change job responsibilities or job itself
3. Anti-action - compensate harmful effect by specific action
   • minimize overtime or uninteresting work by changing how you accept your tasks
4. Preliminary action - pre-arrange or change problem context in advance
   • build consensus with potential opponents before important meeting
5. Theory of Constraints - find the worst bottleneck and improve until it is no longer a bottleneck, continue with the next bottleneck (Theory of Constraints)
   • find what are limiting factors of your growth, work on reducing their impact and increase your abilities and potential
6. Eliminate waste
   • eliminate wasteful activities at work to boost your productivity
7. Lemonade from Lemons - use waste or harmful effect to achieve a positive effect
   • learn from your mistakes and use them to improve and become better next time. As Friedrich Nietzsche said: “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
8. Feedback - introduce or increase feedback to improve action or process
   • seek for feedback and objective evaluation of your performance to advance faster by fixing your shortcomings

Explore future scenarios - project future scenarios to find unexpected opportunities (Alternative Scenarios) (Example: Deciding where to invest money)
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it” – Alan Kay

1. Identify forces
   • identify current economic forces and your personal situation
2. Come up with 4-5 scenarios - good and bad
   • what could happen in the future with both economic and you?
3. Search big opportunities in each
   • find how you can benefit from investment in each of scenario

Lateral thinking (Creative Spark)

Challenge assumptions, break away from obvious perspectives (Assumption Busting) (Example: Raising troubled teenager)
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. “ – Albert Einstein

1. Expose and challenge all assumptions
   • challenge your beliefs about role of a parent
2. Reverse problem in some way (Reversal)
   • praise for something you was punishing before
3. Paradox - opposites exist simultaneously (True and False)
   • accept that you and your teenager are both right about controversial topic. Try to negotiate from this position
4. Provocation - wishful thinking, thought experiments
   • unleash your imagination, go for crazy ideas about solving a problem
5. Changing viewpoint - think from different perspective (Six hats)
   • imagine that you are a bird or live in another time. How would you resolve your relations with kid?
6. Finally, challenge any part of the problem – ask why for anything

Force Associations (Example: Starting your own software business)
“Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected” – William Plomer

1. Random keywords - select any word from dictionary and try to connect to your problem (Random Words)
   • For example, how a tree can be related to your new business?
2. Words of great thinkers - use their quotes and wisdom to associate with a problem.
   • For example, how can Oscar Wilde’s quote: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken” helps with business ideas?
3. Free associating with common attributes - select 12 attributes, choose random 2, consider separating and combined (Combinatory Play)
   • break down into areas – finances, sales, development, clients, technology, usability, etc. Start pairing randomly
4. Metaphors - similarities and connections of your problem with other distant area
   • How analogies of railroad or tropical forest can help with business idea
5. Hieroglyphs - use Egyptian hieroglyphs to associate with your problem
   • arrange randomly hieroglyphs from The Book of Dead to find clues for creating business

Visual clues (Example: Designing web user interface for the new complex domain)

1. Diagram to explore, organize and analyze (Lotus Blossom, Mind Map, Concept Fan)
   1. Explore – search for new areas that can be related to the problem
   2. Organize – put together as one picture what you know about the problem
   3. Analyze – go deep into a problem to find missing details and relations
   • Draw these 3 types of diagram for web site and business domain: put web site purpose in the center, start drawing branches for big ideas and aspects, branch for smaller and so on
     
2. Draw and link abstract symbols for attributes
   • create symbols for web patterns and business concepts, shuffle and find ideas in random associations
3. Drawing - draw anything that can be related to your problem; lets your subconscious drive your hand (Doodling)
   • just draw any screen ideas

Psychological tools

“Everything you can imagine is real.” – Pablo Picasso

Use intuition and subconscious to find answers. Our subconscious is a large scene where conscious thought is a spotlight. Try to elicit ideas from these dark corners of the most powerful part of your mind. (Example: Finding new kicking-ass website idea)

1. Intuition - ask and listen to your intuition
   • come up with website ideas without thinking
2. Incubation - best ideas come than you don’t expect them, just don’t miss them
   • deeply dig into a problem, put into your mind and forget, and probably soon you will jump from the bath and run to the street screaming ‘eureka!’
3. Fantasies - unleash unreal or crazy questions, suspend judgment and answer them (Crazy Ideas)
   • what if you build site for aliens? now you can think about usability for complete dummies, space design, navigation as a star system, etc.
4. Dreaming - capture ideas from dreams
   • set questions before you sleep, try to recover answers from dreams immediately after you wake up
5. Drink beer - to slip into different mind state. I don’t suggest becoming drunk or use something stronger or illegal :)
   • drink and start thinking about website, don’t foget to record your thoughts early enough :)
6. Surrealistic images - find association of hypnogogic imagery with your challenges
   • relax, quiet mind and eyes, become almost unconscious- record experiences immediately after they occur
7. Guided imaginary scenarios to find ideas in unexpected places (Imaginary Excursion)
   • choose scenario (e.g. going to camp and lost in the forest) and while you experience the journey in the head, search for clues
8. Psychosynthesis - spiritual advisers (Role-playing)
   • invite Bill Gates, Sigmund Freud or Karl Marx to talk with you inside your head about the kicking-ass website
9. Streaming - writing out what is in your mind to associate later with the problem
   • hide in a comfortable place and start writing – smart thoughts or gibberish. Find how it could be related to the new website later.

Dialogue

1. Talk with strangers
   • ask about vacation ideas people you don’t communicate often and you’ll get plenty of new ideas
2. Brainstorming - exchange ideas and suggestions without judgment, evaluate and revise ideas later (KJ Brainstorming)
   • ask group of people to generate as many as possible vacation ideas without discussion
3. Brainwriting - parallel generation of ideas in silence (index cards); exchange and develop each other ideas in turn (Brainwriting)
   • everybody in group writes vacation idea on card, give to the next in circle who continue refining this idea
4. Survey - collect ideas from large group of people (Crawford Slip Method, Delphi method)
   • post survey (e.g. Facebook or surveymonkey.com) for vacation ideas
5. Storyboarding - put ideas on the wall as a group works out problems
   • post vacation ideas on the wall and let anybody to contribute (add or extend idea)
6. Socratic dialogue - have a conversation with a smart person and probe various dimensions of thinking: purpose, evidence, reasons, data, claims, beliefs, interpretations, deductions, conclusions, the implications and consequences of thought, response to alternative thinking from contrasting points of view, and so on.
   

Trials and Errors

Solving a problem by trial and error is an expensive, but reliable way to find a solution. In science it called scientific method. Most scientific discoveries are done using this method. (Example: Becoming happy)

1. Ask a Question
   • form a problem statement – what is happiness for you?
2. Do Background Research
   • learn what other people think about happiness
3. Construct a Hypothesis
   • what could make you happy?
4. Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
   • try your ideas in practice
5. Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
   • are you happy now? should you change a hypothesis and start again?
     
6. Communicate Your Results
   • share your results – help other people to become happier

Summary

Your life success depends on your ability to choose right problems and solve them. Do not give up or settle for an ineffective solution. Use the power of your mind to creatively solve problems the best way possible. Control your life.

“He is able who thinks he is able” -Buddha

References

• Thinkertoys: a handbook of creative-thinking techniques, Michael Michalko
• http://www.mycoted.com/Category:Creativity_Techniques
• http://creatingminds.org/
• http://www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_CT.htm
• http://www.creativethinking.net/WP03_Techniques.htm

Creativity can be developed and improved. Here is my Theory of Creativity in 3 parts

1. Prepared Mind – prepare your mind to be creative
2. Right challenges – know what challenges you should embrace now
3. Creative ideas – use powerful techniques to get new ideas

I. Prepared Mind

What should be the qualities of the mind to get great ideas and solve complex problems?

1. Knowledgeable - know problem domain and other fields that can inspire new ideas
2. Flexible - able to vary and adapt the ways of thinking
3. Forceful - eager and resolute to find a solution
4. Easy - clear and free from stress and fear
5. Playful - can surprise and break rules
6. Intuitive - come up with ideas without thinking and reasoning

1. Feed Head – make mind knowledgeable

Organize regular information channels for delivering intellectual food for your head and push your mind outside of familiar boundaries.

Build optimal flow of information in areas of your interests

• Subscribe to blogs, magazines, podcasts, rss, twitter, etc.
  • Balance broad (e.g. techcrunch.com, digg.com) and deep sources (specialized sites or thought leaders blogs).
  • Group online sources (rss, blogs, twitter) based on frequency of updates and value to avoid missing valuable posts in the pile of shallow news.
  • Periodically review existing sources and re-arrange or remove them to keep the feed optimal for your current needs

• Scan for new books, blogs and articles
  • amazon.com is the best site to find great new books
  • Collect references and mentions from trusted sources
  • Use sites like www.stumbleupon.com to discover new blogs and articles

Probe other fields – regularly try new fields for potentially useful information, interesting ideas and new perspectives.

Start with general fields – history, art, economy, philosophy, management, psychology, physics, engineering and many others. Dig deeper if you find the field interesting.

• Subscribe to magazine and websites with interesting articles in wide range of fields targeted for general audience (e.g. New Scientist for science fields)
• Search for highly ranked sources that are interesting and deliver good overview of the selected field.
• Again, amazon.com and Google search are good starting points
• Connect new information to your field – approaches, concepts, problems, solutions

Content analysis – keep your hand on pulse of your society and industry – general trends, key events, statistics, buzzes, news. All this information can be a valuable source for understanding present and future.

Take notes – write down facts, thoughts and problems that can give rise to the new ideas, solutions or topics for future investigation

• Find good tools to capture your thoughts – otherwise you can lose great thoughts and ideas forever
• Maintain Brainbank – collection of idea starters (undeveloped idea briefs) for specific topics in designated virtual or physical folders

2. Prime Your Mind – make it flexible

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” – Buddha

Train mind to be creative, flexible and open to the world. Do not allow to stale – shake and exercise it every day with

• daily idea quote – come up with few ideas every day for any aspect of your professional, public or private life.
• routines - change what you do and how you do from time to time
• experiences – strive for new experiences – travel, engage in the new activities, meet new people and attend new events
• thinking techniques – improve how you think, always look for new approaches

3. Explorer’s Drive (Energy, Courage, Self-Belief) – make mind forceful

“The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.” - Edward Gibbon

• better ideas exist
• you will find them
• you can make mistakes

4. Clear Mind – make it easy

5. Fun, Play, Being a Child – make your mind playful

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso

Try to

• have fun, play
• forget dogmas, break rules
• be curious and spontaneous
• be silly and illogical

Encourage your inner child and don’t let him to grow up :)

6. Train gut feeling – make mind intuitive

• know how to attack the problem without know how you know
• relate problems in one field to unrelated another field
• recognize the crux of the problem
• see general solution to the problem
• recognize solution because it feels right

(by George Turin, of the University of California)

II. Right Challenges

“He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious” - Sun Tzu

And still, creative person with prepared mind can waste talent and energy on solving irrelevant problems. You should focus on the most important problems instead of stretching yourself to fight any challenge.

• Select few important battles that you can win instead of squandering your energy in useless fights.
• Actively prioritize, select or reject your outstanding challenges.
• Select challenges that you are ready to accept and come up with ideas and solutions.
• Focus and work the challenge

1. Know your problems

Regularly,

• keep the journal of interesting problems – problems you want to solve
• see waste – useless activities and commitments in your life. Streamline your life to have more time for important stuff.
• measure key parameters of your life – health, happiness, career, achievements, wealth. Small changes that you barely notice could lead to serious future problems.
• go and see (Genchi Genbutsu) – if you feel that something is wrong, do not hide, but understand and face the challenge
• ask 5 whys (Kaizen) – find root causes of your problems. Do not discard problems as impossible to solve – convert into challenges and opportunities for making your life better.

(the list is inspired by Toyota Production System)

2. Accept challenge

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” - Will Rogers

The last step before working on the challenge is to accept it. We have so many distraction in our life, we procrastinate and keep postponing actions. You have to make a serious deal with yourself to succeed with challenges. Accept the challenge means to commit yourself to work on it. Period. Commit, focus and work the problem, otherwise your attempts will be in vain.

Questions to assess your mind preparation

1. Do I have good sources of information and adequate knowledge?
2. Do I have broad perspective of various fields?
3. Am I flexible and open-minded?
4. Do I have drive, energy and courage to embrace challenges?
5. Is my mind clear and relaxed?
6. Am I playful, curious and free of dogmas?
7. Does my intuition work well?
8. Do I know my challenges?
9. Do I accept them?

Action Plan

If your mind is prepared, you are ready to use your creativity for solving challenges. The next post will equip you with powerful techniques for getting new ideas.

Resources

Thinkertoys: a handbook of creative-thinking techniques, Michael Michalko
How to get ideas, Jack Foster

You have 2 options to communicate your ideas:

Why should a programmer care about communicating ideas to other people?

It is true, the primary job of a programmer is to feed computers with ideas. But you cannot quietly hide behind a computer forever. You have to deal with other people:

1. Make ideas connected with people, not abstractions. Tell them about Joe who was frustrated with our search or Jenny who was so excited with our website new features.
2. Appeal to the senses of responsibility and professional dignity – make people conscience aware about quality problems, system security concerns, low user satisfaction
3. Use self-interest – what is in this idea for the person: survival in the company, career growth opportunity or interesting challenge
4. Appeal to identity – people care about their image and status: “what could someone like me do in this situation?” A good developer not only cares about working code, but also about usability of a solution.

People are amazing, surprising and interesting. They change reality with power of thought and make things happen. What is most exciting – all people are completely different in their attitudes and behavior. But this comes with price – it is difficult to understand people and even more difficult to find the best way to deal with them.
Many people, who see programmers as extensions of their computer systems, will be surprised to discover that programmers are amazing individuals too. Programmers exhibit similar to other people behavior, they have different personalities and need individual approach.

I offer in this post a simple theory about Three Dimensions of a Software Programmer that could help to put relations with these individuals on some rational basis.

Axioms

There are two basic axioms in foundation of the theory

1. Constancy - some programmers consistently outperform others under same conditions.
2. Variability - performance of a programmer varies under different conditions.

Talents (constants)

Talents are recurring patterns of thoughts, feelings and behavior that can be productively applied. – First, Break All the Rules
Genes and upbringing form an adult human with specific talents and personality, strengths and weaknesses. These core individual characteristics of a programmer are difficult to change (except some limited success with consumption of large quantities of beer). Programmers are different – creative, thorough, funny, systematic, laid-back, curious, analytical, spontaneous and so on. Some people cannot be programmers at all.
Each unique programmer has a base performance level that is constant and almost impossible to change.

Three Dimensions (variables)

Now we can move to the part of equation that can be changed. Can we make programmers permanently performing above their base level? To answer this question lets review three variables of programmer’s performance.

X. Energy
measures amount of work and power of ideas that could change and improve reality.
Here I consider a specific kind of energy – creative positive energy that is directed to build better software and aligned with company and customers goals. Individual’s desire to act, create and achieve is the source of this energy. As we discussed above, part of this energy is based on character and predetermined. However, there is a big variable component of individual energy that is driven by motivation and environment.

Y. Discipline
measures ability to focus and follow necessary steps to achieve goals with good quality.
Accountability, self-organization and focus are core elements that keep individuals to perform on a high level. Personality matters here – some people will promise and forget immediately, give up experiencing first difficulties or become distracted by more interesting tasks. Some will fight until the end and go beyond limits to meet commitments, exceed expectations and bring excellent results. However, significant part of programmer’s discipline is variable and depends on context and expectations.

Z. Expertise
measures knowledge and experience in programming, technology and a customer domain.
Expertise includes know how to build software, make right decisions and implement good solutions with minimal troubles. There is no doubt that expertise is growing with time, but individual variations are big. Many people consider expertise as the only important characteristic of a programmer. I believe that it has much lower value without two other variables.

Programmer’s Archetypes

FfHII

How to Improve

A programmer can be 10 times more productive than other programmer and 10 times more productive than himself under different conditions. Therefore right people under right conditions could be 100 times more productive than others.

How can you influence programmer’s performance with these three dimensions? Hopefully, you found right people with right talents. It is a waste of time to change personality and push in direction where talent is absent. However, it is possible to amplify natural strengths and create conditions for super productivity.

Energy
goal: make people empowered, motivated, interested and satisfied; engage them to perform above their base level of energy

job design

• interesting work – brings inspiration and motivation
• control – over own work and decisions – pushes people forward
• self-organization – opportunities to find own ways that bring best results
• creative tension – goals on the edge of capabilities to focus energy and open new energy sources
• defined outcomes – clear direction that reduces anxiety and doubt and increases productivity

psychology

• flow – put mind in a state of energized focus, full involvement, and success
• positive experience – good emotions and healthy team relations; comfortable and trusted environment
• personal interests – decision making considers and takes care of individual interests
• right incentives – compensation, rewards, recognition are the great source of energy and motivation

environment

• space for mistakes – tolerance and open ways to fix mistakes make people think about moving forward instead of covering assess
• productive environment – where people think about work instead of nuisances
• fit – between personal and company goals, culture and views – amplify people desire to work
• reasonable pressure – normal workload, minimal stress, time slack to avoid energy drains

Discipline
goal: make people focused, responsible and aligned; make them performing in the right way

support system

• established process – align actions with goals and support their execution (Agile is the best way to go)
• transparency – reasons for decisions should be clear, problems should surface quickly
• pull system (kanban) – signaling system to trigger action based on actual needs
• control mechanisms, check and balances, audit, risk management (e.g. iterations)

zone of responsibility

• clear areas of responsibility – what is included and what is not
• balance of responsibility and authority – adequate authority to accomplish goals; restrictions to avoid damage
• rules of engagements – when, where, and how force (bold actions) shall be used
• match confidence with responsibilities – an individual is prepared and ready for the new responsibilities

standards

• safety regulations – mandatory rules for everyone
• professional standards – recommended parameters of work and products (security, performance, availability, etc.)
• best practices – spread approaches that work

Expertise
goal: make people knowledgeable, experienced and growing based on their talents

career

• right career path – built on persons strengths – enable growth in area of competence and natural strengths without switching into paths that don’t match talents (e.g. management). Avoid consequences of raising to the level of incompetence (Peter Principle).
• broadbanding – build levels of achievements and pay schemes that allow to achieve and earn more within the same profession
• match expertise and challenges- keep people always interested and challenged, avoid boring or over complicated tasks
• assist self-discovery – help search for the better career and role

perspective

• diversity in tasks and activities – accelerates growth and understanding
• big picture, direct communication with customer – informed people make more optimal decisions
• exposure to different subject areas – broader knowledge opens new possibilities and solutions outside the narrow specialization

learning and practice

• feedback loop – continuous evaluation and improvements based on feedback
• opportunities for learning – grow expertise beside direct work tasks
• sharing, coaching, communication – peer and experts access and support for growth

There is no standard way to increase performance of an individual programmer. Each individual is unique and requires personal approach. The theory of Three Dimensions of a Software Programmer suggests framework for these approaches.
It takes a huge effort to understand every programmer in your team individually and craft personalized approach, path and conditions. But it makes sense to do. People will be productive, engaged and happy. The company will grow and succeed.

What could be a better outcome in our civilized hard working world?

An expert have much better models of reality and methods to build them than an ordinary specialist. The expert, armed with these models, can quickly put pieces of a problem puzzle together, find explanations and solve the problem.

Models can be related to anything – software systems, business domain or your personal relationships.

Predictions and Solutions!

A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Any expert as good as he can effectively predict future outcomes and solve new unforeseen problems. Solutions and predictions are not coming out of blue. They stem from good understanding of reality in an expert’s head. Internal models of reality help to explain problems, find relations and play with future scenarios. These models establish the base for effective thinking and direct expert’s effort to solve problems. If you have poor models of reality, you will make bad decisions. Good models of reality allow reliable predictions and efficient solutions than vague guesses and ad-hoc spontaneous fixes.

Characteristics of a good model:

1. Explanation - provides understanding of elements, processes, events, root causes and effects
2. Testable predictions - a model that makes no predictions that can be observed is not a useful model.
3. Simple - you can remember and use a model without titanic effort
4. Frameworks - knowledge how to recognize common patterns and deal with range of similar problems. Frameworks allow to extend and apply existing models to new situations without building new models.

Brains – the main tool of an expert

I think, therefore I am – Rene Descartes

An expert’s brain carry and operates with models of reality. Unfortunately, our brains are not ideal for this task. Models they create are not identical to reality. Here is why.

limitations

• perception - our senses deliver to brain partial and incomplete information
• memory - our brains can process and memorize only fraction of available information; and even more – we quickly forget this knowledge without practice
• imagination - brains automatically filling gaps for missing information, substitute with interpretation based on internal representation of the outside world

cognitive biases (bugs in brain software)

• anchoring or priming – previous irrelevant experiences prime your consequent thinking and decisions
• need for closure – we are uncomfortable with doubt and uncertainty; we have urge to resolve and find convenient explanations quickly without much thinking
• confirmation bias -  from all facts we unconsciously pick facts that confirm our beliefs and predispositions
• symbolic reduction – we are anxious to reduce complexity for better understanding and tend to form simplified generalizations ignoring complex details and relations.
• and many others

social behavior

• subconscious models and believes – our minds carry beliefs and views imposed by our parents, teachers and culture.  These subconscious models deeply influence our models of reality without much awareness.
• peer pressure, conformity – our minds are wired to conform and agree with other people making us blind for inconvenient facts, ready to follow crowd and accept conventional views without critical revision

Objective Reality

There are no facts, only interpretations.  – Friedrich Nietzsche

Even smartest brains will have challenges to understand reality.

We deal with complex situations:

• incomplete information – we rarely have access to full information and even if it is available we don’t have capacity to collect and absorb all of it
• perpetual changes – reality is very fluid and changes every second
• complex relations and behavior – complex systems are difficult to understand: causes and effects, correlations, feedback loops, influence of processes in external systems
• difficult to test – we often cannot afford large number of experiments, trials and errors to come up with right models and explanations

We deal with people who make our reality very complicated:

• unpredictable - people are difficult to predict, they are often irrational and inconsistent
• confusing - people cannot clearly explain their thinking and feelings or even don’t understand themselves
• deceiving - sometimes people have difficulty to tell truth or simply lie for own advantage

Building Models

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. -  F. Scott Fitzgerald

We understand reality different ways – learning, investigating problems, finding new solutions and practicing. For years we can concentrate on solving immediate problems and do our work without attempts to understand the big picture. Many good specialists have incomplete understanding and fragmented knowledge that still allow to perform well. But it is impossible to become an expert without deep understanding and conscious effort to build good models of reality.

For example, we can stumble for a long time with challenges and failures in building software without understanding its essence and forces. (By the way, search for this understanding is the reason for this blog existence).

Potentially everything what we do in life could help to build and improve our models of reality. We just need to consciously relate our experience and learning to our understanding of reality. And we can do it on the go without special preparation, when we actively engage our minds – working, talking, reading, practicing, traveling, thinking and even sleeping. Just focus on reality modeling.

The models of reality could be explicit (facts and theories) and implicit (intuition and tacit knowledge).

You can use several strategies to build models in your whole mind.
A. Analytical

• find what is most important, map and connect main elements, players and subsystems; learn relations; draw Mind Maps
• understand influence of context and main forces
• create stories, metaphors and patterns – make your models better suited for your brain
• repeat the process for the most important subsystems

B. Empirical

• find most pressing problems, contradictions or real life facts
• understand how do they fit into your models of reality
• it is great if they don’t fit – you have opportunity to improve your models

C. Synthesis – reconcile your models with existing knowledge and leading models

• find what are dominating models, views and believes; what other experts think
• critically analyze this information and theories behind
• find the best opposing theories and try to combine them to form better model

D. Scientific method – use it for practical evaluation of models and confirmation of your theories.

• build hypothesis about reality and outcomes of your actions
• test it in practice
• learn from results and adjust your models

E. People interests and agenda – people are often most surprising and unpredictable element of reality. Your models will be much closer to reality if you understand motives, interests and agenda of involved people.
F. Change perspective – switch different perspectives to enrich models – economic, emotional, social, physical, etc. Try to view from opposite viewpoints and set of principles. Imagine yourself as user of your system, investor of your company, manager, any animal, computer part, etc. (Try to get back without loosing your identity :))  Web developers have interesting concepts of Personas – imaginary users with distinct behavior on website that help to design a system for various cohesive sets of needs.
G. Lateral thinking

• random association – associate models with recent books, distant knowledge fields, your favorite characters
• provocative thinking – make unacceptable, funny, stupid ways to explain problems and shock your models
• ask “why?” – continue asking ‘why’ until your reach questions that nobody could answer on this Earth (or the only answer is 42).
• expand concepts borrowed from other sources to have wider horizon for ideas

In overall, you will switch between two grand strategies – Evolution (discover reality and adopt to it) and Revolution (breakthrough and change reality). The choice depends on models maturity, certainty and your people capabilities.

Therefore

Few people have the imagination for reality.  – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You can be certain that reality in your head is different from objective reality, which is complex, changing and controversial. Effective experts don’t have choice and master reality by
1. Accepting own limitations in understanding of elusive reality
2. Building good models of reality applying different strategies
3. Using, testing and improving models in practice

Good models of reality will make your thinking, decisions and solutions much better. They will make you a master of reality instead of a victim of reality. Good luck with embracing reality!
References:
The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking , by Roger L. Martin
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, by Andy Hunt

Definitions
rule: prescribed guide for conduct or action
intuition: instinctive knowing (without the use of rational processes)
tacit knowledge: automatic, unexpressed knowledge that provides context for people, places, ideas, and experiences. Tacit knowledge is not easily shared. As Polanyi said: “We know more than we can tell.”
context: the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.

Problems with rules

Most rules didn’t come from heaven. They come from ordinary people. They are product of practice, theories, traditions and fear.
Problems:

• context-free – rules reflect standard situations without considering your specific circumstances
• limited verification – most rules are empirical and do not pass vigorous analysis, strict prove and experiments
• time sensitive – many rules become outdated quickly in dynamic professions, industries and societies
• overcautious – fear fuels many rules and seeks to protect from the worst scenario, often imaginable
• low skills denominator – rules tuned to match capabilities of the majority without accounting for individual strengths and weaknesses
• misinterpretation – tacit knowledge of experts, which forms base for many rules, is difficult to transfer in correct and understandable form

Core 7 Qualities of the Expert

1. Motivation. Believe in self. Energy. Unsatisfaction
Motivation appears to be a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise. – Scientific American

You have to believe in self to become a successful expert. An expert need strength, energy and motivation to go beyond ordinary performance levels.
Top performers in different disciplines do this – envision own success and prepare their minds to achieve higher levels. Thinking can “wire” our brains for developing new capabilities and success.
Questions: Am I ready? How can I boost my strength, energy and motivation? How will I succeed?

2. Hard Work. Discipline. Focus.
The differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain. – Anders Ericsson

Hard work is not as difficult after you start and dive into it. Often the problem is that you cannot start or concentrate. Procrastination ruins your progress. There are many barriers for focused and productive work:

• pressure and stress kills productivity
• low interest – without engaged mind your brain will resist to form knowledge
• multitasking – takes away precious concentration and mindset needed for productive work
• unclear goals – disoriented mind cannot focus effectively
• no specific time  – you will tend to postpone, delay and miss practice without strictly scheduled time
• distractions – inconvenient  environment and frequent interruptions don’t help

New Scientist had an advice how to get a grip on yourself and strengthen willpower. The main ideas – willpower is limited resource, easily depleted; it requires planning, boost and  practice.

Also, keep yourself interested. Switch if you start loosing focus and interest. Reboot. Have prepared practices in different areas to enable fresh start for your mind.
Questions:  How do I maintain focus, stay committed and interested? Do I have clear goals, action plan and productive environment?

3. Think critically. Think as a beginner
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but int the expert there are few – Suzuki Roshi

As an expert you cannot go with the flow, believe everything and hide behind authoritative opinions. You cannot stick with your own views forever without changing them. You have to think critically: challenge beliefs, existing theories and dominant ideas. Some of them are completely wrong. Many of them have flaws and can be improved. Most of them are not the best in your specific context.
5 Whys is an excellent method to discover reality.
Better unforeseen solutions exist if you look for them. If you don’t think critically, you will be a follower without much chances to grow your ideas and find better solutions. Keep your mind open and question ideas including your own.
Questions:  What are hard facts, assumptions and theories? What should I trust, dismiss or verify?

4. Full brain power. Use right brain (in addition to left).
The right hemisphere synthesizes over space. The left analyzes over time. – Jerre Levy

Your right brain (more accurately – right brain mode) is inherited from our animal ancestors and shaped by millions years of evolution. Right brain mode is much more powerful, reliable and faster than left brain mode. Right brain works in parallel with images, subconscious mind and deep vast memory (even when you sleep). On the contrary, left brain works with symbols and words; it is logical, analytical and linear. It can only work with few ideas in the same time (4-7) and needs focus and conscious effort. We need left brain to formulate, express ideas and communicate them to others.
Experts are using both brains – left for rational thinking, analysis and communication, right for intuition, imagination and creative insights. One of the best books how to start using you right brain is The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
Learn how to expand your brain power with the right brain mode. If you use only left brain mode, you’ll stay dull, rational and predictable specialist.
Questions: How can I engage my both brain modes? (Hint: interest, humor, senses, emotions, surprise.) What puzzles can I feed to my subconscious mind?

5. Continuous learning. Sharing
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust

Experts never stop to learn. The day you believe you know everything is your last day as an expert. Experts learn from new research and existing knowledge, they learn from other people and they learn from own experience. Also they learn from disciplines outside of their professional realm that can provide new ideas.
For a example, a programmer could benefit from learning:

• psychology – better understand how users think and perceive, how to engage customers, how to make yourself and team productive and motivated;
• design, aesthetics, art – beautiful systems are more usable and successful
  
• management theories and practices – learn how to organize people and activities  (for example Agile learned a lot from Toyota Production System and Japanese product development)
• system theories – understand fundamental principles and laws governing complex systems
• economics, business – why people and business need software, how software fails or succeed on market; how your software fits into company business; how to start your own company
• culture, social life, demographics – trends in behavior, interest and problems of groups of people (by sex, age, education, profession, etc). This knowledge will explain current dynamic and suggest future opportunities.

Make learning essential part of your everyday life. If you don’t learn, you stop your journey to become an expert.
You gain deeper knowledge if you share your knowledge with other people – discuss, explain, teach, blog, speak, present. Other people – with different views and perspective – will quickly show weaknesses and quality of your knowledge. Sharing with others will push your learning further and deeper than keeping knowledge to yourself.

Questions: What do I not know? How will I learn it? How will I share it?

6. Self-improvement. Know yourself.
Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye? – Matthew

We protect ourselves from inconvenient truth and often are blind to own mistakes. Our psychological defense systems help to avoid depression and anxiety by protecting our ego, but also distort our view and perception of true reality.
Good experts are capable to see truth, be objective and correct themselves. They try to avoid the trap of groupthink, crowd psychology and self white washing.  They know own strengths, weaknesses and biases.
Seek  the truth about self, know your internal beliefs and motivation and improve yourself. Otherwise, your rosy distorted pictures will hinder your growth and you will become the part of a problem, not the part of a solution.
Questions: What can I do better? How can I improve myself? Am I honest with myself?

7. Big picture. Systems Thinking. Creative solutions.
Opportunity ideas do not lie around waiting to be discovered. Such ideas need to be produced. – Edward de Bono

Experts main advantages are tacit knowledge and experience. They understand big picture, reality, context and how systems work. However, it is not enough. Experts should solve problems. And therefore, they should train themselves for problem solving, innovation and changing reality in the novel ways. The outcome, a creative solution,  is quintessence of hard work, deep knowledge and intuition.
Questions:  What is the big picture: forces, players and relations? How things can be done better? Do I see new ways?

Questions to Ask Yourself

1. Motivation – Am I ready? How can I boost my strength, energy and motivation? How will I succeed?
2. Focus – How do I maintain focus, stay committed and interested? Do I have clear goals, action plan and productive environment?
3. Critical thinking – What are hard facts, assumptions and theories? What should I trust, dismiss or verify?
4. Full Brain power – How can I engage my both brain modes? What puzzles can I feed to my subconscious mind?
5. Continuous Learning – What do I not know? How will I learn it? How will I share it?
6. Self Improvement – What can I do better? How can I improve myself? Am I honest with myself?
7. Creative solutions – What is the big picture: forces, players and relations? How things can be done better? Do I see new ways?

If you know answers to these questions, you don’t need rules to solve problems – you are ready to make good decisions and become an expert.

References:
Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition , Wikipedia
The Science of Experience, by John Cloud/Tallahassee, TIME
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, by Andy Hunt
The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards
The Expert Mind , Scientific American
The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer

Disclaimer: This post is devoted to a person who wants to become an expert – the top player in a specific field as programming, soccer or chess. This post will be not interesting for people who are satisfied with their current performance and not interested to be the best.

If you want to become an expert, it is not enough to follow your work assignments or occasionally play with interesting stuff at home. You have to push yourself hard in specially designed way.

@Work
Your paid work tasks and projects are not designed to make you an expert. Your company expects results from your work: reliable, with minimal mistakes and focused on the company main goal – make money. Your employer could provide minimal training to help you with job requirements. However, your growth will be constrained by company needs, timelines, work assignments and acceptable methods. We cannot blame our organizations – this is part of the deal – they pay for your work and expect specific results. But… is this the best way for you to become an expert, acquire new skills and gain knowledge? To become an expert, you have to make many mistakes, learn from them, experiment with alternatives and work hard on your weaknesses. How many organizations do allow this risky, unproductive and unreliable way of working?

@Home
Your play at home with interesting stuff has problems too. To satisfy your programming instincts and curiosity, you will probably select what you enjoy to do and eager to try. You’ll immense in this activity and find great satisfaction from doing it. But…  is this the best way to become an expert by doing only what you like? Becoming an expert requires hard, sometimes unpleasant work, specifically designed to improve your performance and push you over comfort zone.

Genesis of an expert

Research shows that experts do not have more innate talent, but put more effort and dedication. Newcomers to the field need at least 10 years to become an expert. They move through several stages: from a novice, who blindly follows rules, to an expert, who does not need rules.
Most people will stop on the level of competent specialist acceptable for the majority of jobs in the field. Only few will continue pushing forward to achieve the top level.

We agree that expert performance is qualitatively different from normal performance and even that expert performers have characteristics and abilities that are qualitatively different from or at least outside the range of those of normal adults. However, we deny that these differences are immutable, that is, due to innate talent. Only a few exceptions, most notably height, are genetically prescribed. Instead, we argue that the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain. – Anders Ericsson

Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance–for instance, keeping up with one’s golf buddies or passing a driver’s exam–most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind’s box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields. – Scientific American

Kathy Sierra wrote that you, to become an expert who kicks ass, should keep reminding: “I’ll keep pushing myself. There’s always some way to do it better…”. How should we push ourselves?

If you do same tasks over and over again, you will not become an expert. If you do what you are good at, you will not improve your overall performance. You should focus on improving skills beyond your present competence. Outcome of your practice as not as important as developing your capabilities.
You can spend years doing your favorite activities and still stay at amateur level while dedicated novice can quickly leave you behind. Practice should concentrate around your weaknesses and areas that are important, but you probably try to avoid. You should repeatedly progress to the higher level through persistent training and overcome your limits.

Anders Ericsson (his research is the most influential in this area) calls this approach deliberate practice:

“Deliberate practice is different. It entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can’t do well-or even at all. Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become.”

Design your practice

Follow 7 steps

1. Who is an expert?
You should understand what is the profile of an expert that you want to be – required capabilities, knowledge, areas of expertise and types of the problems experts work on.
Have a beer with guru and ask for opinion (early enough), study job advertisements for high skilled positions (don’t be carried away), read about top players – why they are considered experts, what makes them special (skip part how they spend money) and how they achieved top level.

2. Find your gaps and weaknesses.
You can identify areas which require improvement once you know the profile of the ideal expert. Put them on the list and assign importance.

3. Build roadmap.
Answer the questions: in what order you want to work on these areas and what are the major steps.
Instead of focusing for a long time on one area, I would recommend to go in spiral – learn and practice various areas in parallel. Each spiral cycle should add to your experience small, but integral chunk of core expertise. Often developing diverse skills together brings synergy – deeper perspective, holistic view and increased capabilities for wider range of tasks.

4. Design practice to improve performance
Set specific goals and methods – how do you improve performance, gain skills and knowledge for each area.
Consider famous SMART goals for practice: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-boxed. Coach, who can effectively guide you, is very helpful on this stage. However, you can go alone if you are motivated and disciplined enough.
Don’t burn yourself too much – your mind and body should be ready and eager to practice. Give yourself time for recovery, life and other favorite activities, otherwise you’ll soon hate your practice.

5. Everyday practice on the edge of capabilities – at least 30 minutes
Deliberate practice is highly demanding and requires intensive concentration and focus. The practice should be scheduled, clear and focused – don’t give yourself chances to procrastinate. Concentrate on the excellence of execution – sloppy practice is not acceptable for top players. You should practice challenging tasks on the edge of your capabilities. Compare playing basketball with professional players or beginner kids from the neighborhood. Who will push you more and show how good you are?
Observe and understand how and what you do – this process will develop intuition and patterns in your brains for future fast automatic decision making. Train yourself to think and act on the higher level – what is difficult for other people, should be trivial for you.

6. Feedback
Constant feedback loop is the must in deliberate practice. Correct assessment of performance and results with following adjustment of practice will move you much faster. And certainly, interested and qualified coach capable of giving constructive and painful feedback is very important. Each day of practice should move you forward against higher and higher standards.

7. Correct your roadmap and practice.
Feedback, self-evaluation and practical use of your skills will tell if you are on the right track. Be fluid and open for change of direction, new knowledge and unexpected opportunities. Learn and adjust goals, plans and methods on the go. As Eisenhower said: plans are nothing, planning is everything. Your rise as an expert will open for you new horizons that definitely change your plans and original intentions.

Additional Requirements

• Discipline, motivation, unsatisfaction – top experts are extremely dedicated, disciplined and motivated to grow and improve performance. Without the goal of improving performance, the motivation to engage in practice vanishes, and practice becomes boring routine.
• Support – you’ll have ups and downs, moments of despair and disbelief. You need somebody who can understand, compassionate and encourage – friends, family, colleagues or a coach.

Deliberate practice in context

Practice @Work
Deliberate practice methods and work objectives are different. However, it is possible to grow as an expert and work productively.

• First, your company could have work in target areas of your expertise growth. Position yourself to take advantage of any opportunity to move there.
• Second, any company will benefit from motivated and competent player, who wants to grow his capabilities. A smart company will support and encourage your drive… and use for own benefits.

Strategy:

1. Job intelligence – what are opportunities, potential projects and tasks to assist with your progress as an expert? How can your help your company while upgrading your skills? Invent new opportunities. You have to build case for your advance and show benefits for the company.
2. Call for the job redesign – many companies will be flexible for people who wants to progress and contribute more (if no, maybe you are in the wrong place)
3. Productive work and intensive practice – work in the best way to help with your goals, but don’t make a company victim of your practice. Separate prototyping and experiments from production work. Make them open, controllable with a clear statement of benefits. Seek for challenging assignments on the edge of your capabilities.
4. Tap into company pool of talents, expertise and knowledge – this is free (actually paid) opportunity to use coaching and valuable resources for growth acceleration. Ask for advises, guidance and feedback.

You will find, as your star is rising (expertise growing), that you have more freedom to work in areas that have the most interest for you.

Practice @Home, @Train or @Cafe
This is time for

• research, learning, thinking
• crazy experiments
• irrelevant to your work practice
• practice that need special focus, time and conditions, difficult to achieve at work

Formal training
Qualified and relevant training can move you much faster. If you decide to invest in education be very specific what you expect and make sure that you’ll not waste your time.

Sample Road to become Web Development Expert
You can identify few key areas:

• HTML / CSS
• Graphic Design / Art
• Usability / Aesthetics
• Information Architecture
• Client – side programming / javascript / AJAX
• RIA (e.g. Silverlight / Flash)
• Server – side programming and databases

And design practice for each of them, for example:

Experts: Executive Summary

Experts are essential for the company/team competitive advantage. They enable revolutions and support evolution.

Experts are made, not born. Experts are made by themselves. It is a long, thorny and hard road. But this road makes their life interesting, positive, meaningful and brings happiness from achieving a rare gift – mastery in the field they love.

Albert Camus said: But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

For few people the harmony is a journey to become The Master.

Resources:
The Expert Mind , Scientific American
How to be an expert , Kathy Sierra
The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer