The thing about discovered elegance (ie potential for hindsight simplification in the output of complex effort) is that it’s not necessarily “efficiency” in the sense of achieving a goal with less resources, gaining “savings”. You’ve already sunk inelegant effort. So what to do?
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If you’re on an iterative learning curve, maybe future instances of effort can be cheaper. For example, in doing a manual analysis, you spot an elegant algorithm for automating it that makes future instances much cheaper and faster. That’s close-ended learning. Lean learning.
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But discovered elegance is rarely that limited. Nature rarely hands you “lean” gifts that can only be used to make the next instance cheaper. Nature is not a “25% off next purchase” coupon gifter. Nature’s gifts have unexpected “fat” spillover potential, like a cashback.
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But to actually claim the gift, you have to open up the scope of what you’re doing. You have a hammer in your hand you didn’t expect to have. You must look around for nails you didn’t know were hammerable. If you don’t, and only look within existing scope, you will likely *lose*.
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The hammer in this metaphor can be thought of as discovered IP. Depending on the nature of the work context, you may have some claim on the IP itself (for example my former employer Xerox had a mechanism to assign IP it had no use for back to inventor employees).
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If for example, you invent a better mousetrap while employed at Mousetraps, Inc. you may lose some pay for sunk effort (it looks like a day’s work, actually took a week) but get a patent bonus, and maybe rights for non-mousetrapping applications. But these are side issues.
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The deeper point here is developing a bonus/spillover ‘lucky’ mentality and actively looking for elegance in everything you do. Even at the risk of lower immediate reward due to maker’s dilemma. In the short run, in specific gigs, you may lose rewards.
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But in the long run, you’ll develop a reputation for being unreasonably lucky and inspired. A “done, and gets things smart” genius rather than a mere “smart, and gets things done” worker-bee. See Steve Yegge post on this: steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-a
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A bonus mentality is also the trick behind “talent hits what others can’t hit, genius hits what others can’t see”, can you guess why?
It has to do with “obviousness” in where you’ve come from versus in where you could go.
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If an “obvious” insight at line 800/week 3 of coding V1 of a program leads you to actually deliver a 20-line V2 that takes 1 hour to write, your client will feel cheated if you charge more than a day.
But the 3 weeks are not waste, they’ve refactored your perception!
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Those bonus nails are how you capture more value from your insights AND ensure everybody groks the potential so it’s turned into spillover societal value.
That is the big prize. So don’t let the maker’s dilemma in creative work inhibit your openness to discovery.
Carpe diem!
GIF
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