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But as you get older and less good at being clever, applying Newton's laws no longer feels like virtuoso pleasure at doing an unnecessary difficult thing. You prefer plug-and-play brain dead easy of lagrangian equations. And as problems get harder, you *need* them to solve at all
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Spoiler alert: the story ended with pure automation. CAD packages that can do all classical mechanics calculations for you are descended from Lagrangian version of Newton's laws (specifically a very modern 20th century version called Kane's equations that's ideal for computers)
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General project management is currently at the Newton level. Or pre-Boyd fighter tactics level. It needs to get to the Kane's equations/E-M+OODA level. And the effect of getting there will feel like "automating caring" (2) so you can devote all your energy to truth+pleasure (1+3)
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Now back to my regularly scheduled procrastination and neglect of PM backlog of activities and pretending doing a thread on twitter crosses off the "make this spreadsheet" to-do on that to-do list which is itself sinking under a pile of entropy.
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Addendum: this approach should be called "designing for cowpaths" as in the UX heuristic of "pave the cowpaths." That only works if the original design was sensible enough as a potential field that the emergent cowpaths finish the job. Design the project to need no management.
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Hey , we're working on exactly this problem. The end goal of project management is to get all work done on time at the fastest possible pace. We think it's possible to achieve this through smart scheduling based off the PERT model. Curious to know what you think.
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The guiding principle is the same as you define here -> twitter.com/vgr/status/140 The "science" is to ensure that the most important work is done in least time. "In least time" is a pure scheduling problem. It's an optimisation on available time.
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The formula to automate a project management "caring" layer is simple to state but hard to execute: 1. Separate the PM into "science" and "human factors" components 2. Build a potential-field theory of the "science" part to get rid of the arbitrary playbooks 3. UX the rest
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I'll read the thread again more carefully and explore the Boydian theory you mentioned as well. Feels like the same direction. There's quite a bit to think about in this thread. Thanks!