Analysis Paralysis and the Pareto Principle

A reader inspires a post

I had a conversation today with a reader that is certainly an effective individual, has a achieved a rather rare position in his life and is certainly not averse to DOING; instead of sitting around, thinking about having a conversation, about possibly making a list, of approaches that one might take, heading towards the doing of a thing.

We spoke briefly about AI and its hallucinations, and he mentioned how he could not get the AI to count to 50,000 for a task, and it would only produce 10 to 12,000 of the items asked for the task. The task itself was trivial in the sense that it was not pivotal whether the Ai produced 50,000 blue widgets or green ones, but inevitably, it only produced no more than 12,000 when he corrected it multiple times. The whole thing a total waste of time, and possibly he might have wasted less time if he had done the task himself.

I have certainly encountered the issue long before AI became a thing. When I studied civil engineering, drawings were still mostly made by hand by draftsmen. This meant a revision would take time and cost money and human labour. Today, they issue drawing revisions constantly, and the buildings are not any better for it, nor are they built more efficiently except possibly by those who really DO leverage the technology mercilessly.

But to give you an idea of how bad things are, concerning the events of the great siege of Malta (from wikipedia):

Expecting another Ottoman invasion within a year, the new Grand Master, Juan de Homedes, ordered the strengthening of Fort St. Angelo at the tip of Birgu, as well as the construction of two new forts, Fort Saint Michael on the Senglea promontory and Fort Saint Elmo at the seaward end of Mount Sciberras (now Valletta). The two new forts were built in the remarkably short period of six months in 1552. All three forts proved crucial during the Great Siege.

Fort St. Michael

Fort St. Elmo

Not exactly shacks.

Now compare this to a 9 stories commercial building in the heart of London I worked on, with all the modern machinery, which took over a year to complete. And that was with a really efficient workforce and organisation.

And remember these guys did it in the 1500s.

The upshot of our conversation was that he concluded that because today we have the ability to(only exponentially grown in the last couple of years) to forever have another iteration at practically zero cost, it causes an inability to make a choice.

And I realised this is true. From everything to relationships to building anything at all.

Swipe left as there could be a hotter guy on the next slide. Redraw a detail seven times then go back to the original either way. And that doesn’t even factor in the time lost revising the work.

I have often thought that if I can get my oldest (and coolest) typewriter to work properly, I would write a short novel on it, then scan the pages with OCR and put it up as a book. I wanted to see if doing that would actually force me to pay more attention to typos or grammatically weak sentences more; and in so doing produce a finished work faster than the possibility of endless revision.

I decided against it primarily because I don’t know where I could get the typewriter properly reconditioned. And also because I do fairly little revising myself. But one day… I will try to measure this and find out.

Our ability to have. almost infinite choice DOES result in us simply often NOT doing anything.

And this is where the Pareto principle comes in. Aim to DO something regardless of “perfection”, which is unachievable anyway, and if you get 80% done right(ish) then celebrate your success.

Ask that girl out. You may get shot down, but you won’t get shot. The worst “No” I ever had was still a polite no. usually framed as “I have a boyfriend.” And not asking will result in 100% failure rate. Those who ask eventually get. You might not get the 10 of your dreams, but you’ll eventually get someone that is stable and good for you.

Take that chance (not ridiculously crazy) at learning a new skill, or taking on a new job, or trying a new dish. Life is more fun if you DO.

It will also teach you to MAKE A DAMNED DECISION! Which is in essence what life is really about. Making decisions. One after the other, in an endless chain until you die.

I see posts on Substack giving “advice” to “people” who are “afraid” of failing at writing on Substack, so they tell them to write blog posts for a year and have them all scheduled for publication so they can have a buffer of time to become regular bloggers.

It’s absolutely idiotic.

I almost never re-read a post and as a result have some typos, or a missed punctuation here and there. So what? Just git’er DONE!

Especially you younger guys with an aversion to the written word. READ more. Read the Illiad. Read the Odyssey. Read the Lord of the Rings. Read Tarzan. Read decent books. Yes, actual books. And no, I am not going to explain why that’s important. If you DO it, you will figure it out yourself in due course.

Stop over-thinking everything and DO!