A list of tasks to complete does not contain sufficient information to describe a multi-party process. For example, if you were to describe ‘pick up the milk’ to an extraterrestrial you might say 1) go to the store 2) buy milk 3) check out 4) go home. However, this hides the complexity of interactions.
Sticking with the example, what actually happens is that you get into the car and turn the ignition. The car turns on or not. If it doesn’t turn on then you are blocked (a terminal state). If the car turns on you drive to the store (ignoring the interactions between cars, traffic lights, etc. for brevity). Once at the store you find the milk and go to the cashier. You hand the item to them. They place it in a bag. They tell you how much to pay. You pay them. They accept the payment, they give you a receipt. You take the bag. You go to your car (repeating the process earlier) and go home.
If you were new to buying milk from the store, the checklist from the first paragraph would not help you because it hides complexity by making it seem like a single-party sequence rather than a complex set of interactions between multiple parties. It lacks context and therefore would not be repeatable.
See also:
- This is relevant when trying to outsource work and finding that the tasks are more complicated than you realize
- Reading is the transformation of a linked list of ideas into a tree
Links to this note
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The Second Time, Write it Down
If you do something more than once, write down the steps taken to complete the task. Chances are, if you have to do something twice, you’ll need to repeat it more times later.