Nov 10, 2023·edited Nov 10, 2023Liked by Navin Kabra
I think the one I find the most interesting is the same as yours but for a slightly different reason. It struck me the most when I heard it for the first time in a talk by Jeff Dean when he said that when you operate systems at the scale and complexity of the Internet, something is always going to be wrong at any given time, so you have to design to tolerate failures.
But I did not understand the full impact of this until recently I realized that pretty much everything is complex enough [1]. If I may add one more law/quote (which I got from http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail) "Reality has a surprising amount of detail". In fact I feel lot of the laws stem from this realization. You have to tolerate failures because some details are going to go wrong sooner or later. You have to keep iterating because there are always going to be details that you didn't grasp the previous time. You have to estimate, guesstimate or approximate because there are lots of detail that can not be always perfectly captured - hence also why you shouldn't wait for a perfect plan, etc.
[1] I will give a very mundane example that is actually example of failing to apply this law rather than success :) I am anxious about forgetting routine things like bill payments. I setup a bunch of automation to protect against that so that me forgetting things is not a problem. But recently a sequence of events of losing wallet -> losing cards -> blocking them -> forgetting to update all the accounts etc lead to an automated payments failing resulting in a late payment. Not a big deal, but just an example of something as simple as that where a setup I thought was perfect did not work because "details".
Since I have you here, I had a question about your Power law video, is there a article/commentable version of it? Youtube is unfortunately not that great for asking questions/discussion.
This one is my favourite. 44. (Lachance's Law) "Plenty of time" becomes "not enough time" in a very short time.
I begin planning early, really early. Then realise, oh, this is not efficient. And when I wake up next, there is nearly not enough time.
Equally applicable to time you look forward to.... vacations, time with kid. When you view it a the beginning it feels like the ten days will stretch forever, and you stop counting. And before you know it.. Bam. Lachances Law.
This is so true, especially for the time you look forward to.
For the less look-forward-to aspects, it might be interesting to keep in mind Parkinson's Law: "Work expands to fill all available time", so maybe not plan early, really early. 11th hour scrambling has some advantages after all! 😂
I think the one I find the most interesting is the same as yours but for a slightly different reason. It struck me the most when I heard it for the first time in a talk by Jeff Dean when he said that when you operate systems at the scale and complexity of the Internet, something is always going to be wrong at any given time, so you have to design to tolerate failures.
But I did not understand the full impact of this until recently I realized that pretty much everything is complex enough [1]. If I may add one more law/quote (which I got from http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail) "Reality has a surprising amount of detail". In fact I feel lot of the laws stem from this realization. You have to tolerate failures because some details are going to go wrong sooner or later. You have to keep iterating because there are always going to be details that you didn't grasp the previous time. You have to estimate, guesstimate or approximate because there are lots of detail that can not be always perfectly captured - hence also why you shouldn't wait for a perfect plan, etc.
[1] I will give a very mundane example that is actually example of failing to apply this law rather than success :) I am anxious about forgetting routine things like bill payments. I setup a bunch of automation to protect against that so that me forgetting things is not a problem. But recently a sequence of events of losing wallet -> losing cards -> blocking them -> forgetting to update all the accounts etc lead to an automated payments failing resulting in a late payment. Not a big deal, but just an example of something as simple as that where a setup I thought was perfect did not work because "details".
Great points, Vinit. In fact, "Reality has a surprising amount of detail" is also one of my favourites!
Since I have you here, I had a question about your Power law video, is there a article/commentable version of it? Youtube is unfortunately not that great for asking questions/discussion.
Also, your Youtube channel is great btw!
Not yet, but will get to it one-of-these-days!
This one is my favourite. 44. (Lachance's Law) "Plenty of time" becomes "not enough time" in a very short time.
I begin planning early, really early. Then realise, oh, this is not efficient. And when I wake up next, there is nearly not enough time.
Equally applicable to time you look forward to.... vacations, time with kid. When you view it a the beginning it feels like the ten days will stretch forever, and you stop counting. And before you know it.. Bam. Lachances Law.
Thanks @Deepa.
This is so true, especially for the time you look forward to.
For the less look-forward-to aspects, it might be interesting to keep in mind Parkinson's Law: "Work expands to fill all available time", so maybe not plan early, really early. 11th hour scrambling has some advantages after all! 😂
Oh...oh... there are some lovely variations of Parkinson's Law:
- If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do
- Work contracts to fit in the time we give it
and Asimov's corollary:
- In ten hours a day you have time to fall twice as far behind your commitments as in five hours a day