Anonymous, (“One Thousand Tips Do Not Make a System” n.d.)
Summary
The “big, long list of tips” is simply not a good way to organize information so as to make it useful. What you need is a […] system.
Thoughts
Notes
Well, consider a real-time strategy game like Starcraft II. One of the most important things to do in SC2 is macromanagement: making sure that your resources are all being used sensibly. Now, macromanagement could be learned as a big, long list of tips. Like this:
- Try to mine minerals.
- Recruit lots of soldiers.
- Recruit lots of workers.
- It’s a good idea for a mineral site to have between 22 and 30 workers.
- Workers are recruited at a command center.
- Soldiers are recruited at a barracks.
- In order to build anything, you need workers.
- In order to build anything, you also need minerals.
- For that matter, in order to recruit more units, you need minerals.
- Workers mine minerals.
- Minerals should be used immediately; if you’re storing them, you’re wasting them.
(Of course, the above tips only work for Terrans.)
Okay, great. Now you have a command center and a bunch of workers. You want a bunch of soldiers. What do you do?
Why, let’s look at our tips. “Try to mine minerals.” Okay, you start mining minerals. “Recruit lots of soldiers.” You can’t do that, because you don’t have a barracks, so you’ll have to build one. “Recruit lots of workers.” But wait, recruiting workers and building a barracks both require minerals. Which one should you do? I dunno. “It’s a good idea for a mineral site to have between 22 and 30 workers.” Okay, you have six; how quickly can you recruit sixteen more workers? What if you have too many workers? “Workers are recruited at a command center.” You already knew that! “Soldiers are recruited at a barracks.” You don’t have one!
Aha, you say, what we need is a checklist of macromanagement habits. Maybe you should put all of those habits in a deck of flash cards, so then you can memorize them all. What if, despite knowing a hundred macromanagement habits, you realize that you’re not actually using all of them? Well, that’s just akrasia, right? Maybe you need to take more vitamin D or something…
But no, that’s not what you need. The “big, long list of tips” is simply not a good way to organize information so as to make it useful. What you need is a macromanagement system.