Hammock thoughts

I have a tendency to over-think / over engineer things. I like to have a tight plan that leads from start to finish. Even when I try to learn from my past and see how many times this has failed me, i still tend to fall into over thinking...

After building a full architecture that "should" work from now till when we will be a team of over a hundred engineers (obviously won't work but still...), I realized I need to change my style.

When looking at T.V shows and different an writers I was told there are two techniques - the Gardner or Farmer, and the Architect or the Planner. (For the sake of both our sanity I'll stick to Planner). The Planner is someone that has a fully detailed plan - they think of every little detail and make sure everything intertwines perfectly. A good example of this is the fist season of Prison Break, and I refuse to comment on the rest of the seasons. A sentence said in the first episode could impact the last episode. Everything works tightly together. You can easily see the writer reviewing the story again and again to make sure everything works according to his vision. Nothing is left to chance. Those of us with OCD tendencies feel very good with such rigid structures.

I believe that most humans have a tendency to think in such a manner, and usually get quite disappointed when it doesn't work out. This frame of thought is very appealing. However, I've seen very few successful attempts. Moreover, I believe that in "real life", when you can't control everything, it hardly every pans out.

The other technique requires a completely different frame of thought. Imagine a Gardner strolling through a patch of land. The Gardner might have a clear vision of how she would like the scenery to look in a few years, though she understands she has no real control. All she can do is make a basic plan, plant seeds in the right places, and hope for the best. She could return, cut a few branches or weed out unwelcome guests. But nature will do what it wants with this piece of land.

Remember Game of Thrones? G.R.R Martin was more of a Gardner. He laid down the ground work of a whole civilization, and then let them act out in his world. Here and there he might have pushed two characters so they could meet, but their interaction was based on who they already were, not what Martin wanted. This can create boring times as nothing seems to happen, but on the other hand it also makes surprises of the type we weren't used to seeing on T.V.

Although I knew I'd probably fail, I decided to try and be a Gardner. I had a vision, though I decided to plant some seeds and see if when they grow up they will agree with me or not. I tried to strip My idea down to the simplest solution I could make now, and see what happens when the need arrives.