All about the Kinder™
The Kinderism’s: The 10/120 Rule
By Adam Kinder on Aug 21, 2008 in Life, Programming
And verily, this rule of Kinderism I give to you: The 10/120 Rule
The 10/120 rule is something I came up with a few years ago, and began applying to my programming. I guess it could be used for just about anything, but it’s a bit too restrictive when it comes to something like.. skydiving 
Read on for the full post.
The 10/120 is simple in concept. If you can’t learn enough about X subject in 10 minutes to produce a low-level, functioning, demo in 120 minutes, then move on. In the case of projects and programming, the move on section is replaced with ‘outsource it’. There’s nothing wrong with having a project that is 80% prime ( your team ) and 20% sub ( another team ) as long as the right management techniques are used. But verily, that is another post.
A recent example of mine being Panda3d and Python. I knocked the rust out of my python learnin’s, sped through the P3D tutorials in under 10 minutes, and in less than an hour I had a Boeing 747 flying through space with a working camera. This coming from 0 game development experience aside from failed demos.
Failing the 120 minutes ceiling doesn’t mean that you just drop it forever. The 10/120 rule is more about productivity and maximizing your efforts toward things that you are naturally good at. If you fail and give your mind a break from that activity for a while, chances are when you revisit your efforts later, you have a better chance of a break through. Also known as a ‘holy shit’ moment.
While I use the 10/120 rule strictly for programming and project management, it’s possible to use it for other topics as well. A good one would be drinking, if you can’t learn enough about bourbon in 10 minutes to be drunk in 120 minutes, then you’re doing it wrong.
Take this Kinderism to heart, go forth, and conquer! Also, if you use it, let me know so I can get a warm fuzzy.
I like the idea of your 10/120 rule, as it really emphasises staying away from many things that would eat up a large amount of your time while not providing many rewards.
However, many things require a larger investment of time and effort at the beginning. A quick, dirty, low-level demo can’t be thrown together for every project/module/package/etc. For example, when I started out with GNU/Linux back in the days of Redhat 4, the installation process was a nightmare. But perseverence paid off, and the world of FOSS opened up to me.
I’m sure you didn’t mean for the rule to be all encompassing though, so maybe I shouldn’t bother to post this. With that said, I’ll explicitly state what you’re probably implying:
Apply the 10/120 rule often. When it tells you to move on, take a step back and decide whether or not the extra effort required could pay off in the long run.
Cheers,
Nick
OT: In the “Leave a comment” section of your blog posts, I strongly recommend that the form field labels be located above the form fields.
When I was filling in the form for my previous post, it took me a few seconds to figure out where my name and email address where supposed to go.
Luke Wroblewski is a recognised expert on usability, and also web forms. He wrote a great article discussing the merits of different web form layouts. When you have a minute, take a look:
http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/web_forms.html
Cheers,
Nick
BTW, I would have emailed this to you, but I couldn’t find an email address on your site…
I’m a big fan of LukeW and his designs, I’ll look into the article and see about making some tweaks to the site. Anything to encourage more discussion
Thanks for the comments!