Dealing with Complexity

The two things I’ve spent the most time studying are software engineering and music composition. While they seem to be very different fields of study, large-scale works in either area rely on one very important common skill: the ability to manage complexity. In software, you know that your complexity is out of control when it becomes harder and harder to make changes as the size of the code base grows. In music, complexity is out of control when your piece becomes less and less coherent as it grows in length and instrumentation. It wouldn’t surprise me if other fields are similar. Once you get the basic skills and semantics out of the way, the biggest thing that determines whether or not you fail or succeed has to do with whether or not you can keep complexity under control. The same thing is true for your personal and professional life. There are hundreds of things fighting for your attention every minute of every day. If you don’t take a proactive stance on trying to reduce and manage the complexity in your life, it can take over. So how can you deal with complexity? Here are a few tips: 1. Organize Lack of organization costs you previous minutes and hours of your life. The real trick is to understand the things where organization benefits you and the things where it doesn’t. Some things only require a level of what I call messy organization. If you have two different types of socks, there isn’t much benefit in pairing them all up. Just dump t...
Source: Productivity501 - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Misc Source Type: blogs