“The main mistake when dealing with an overwhelming amount of data and stuff is to reduce it, rather than relating to it on a more abstract level. It’s always easier to cut away than it is to create, but it’s not always the best solution.”

做减法不一定是最好的选项，可以考虑对问题更好地如何做抽象。做抽象能够减少概念，如何把这些把一个大的概念、系统解耦合，控制好不同部分的交互与自由度，因为一旦自由度高了，系统的复杂度就会指数增长。

“For a creative person, workload management with external constraints is especially stressful. A manager executing simple procedures may more easily divide his day into 15-minute slots and do different things in each slot.39 A creative person and even a craftsman can’t do so, as both need time to retool. For the creative person, the retooling happens subconsciously, and when the retooling is complete, inspiration suddenly strikes. This means that it’s perfectly possible to switch between things, even rapidly, according to where the inspiration strikes. For instance, at any one time I have four to six simultaneous projects going. If I restricted myself to just one project for the sake of simplicity, or tried to switch projects on a pre-arranged schedule dictated by time management, there would be a lot of downtime when my subconscious was processing a problem while I would be sitting around doing nothing and being underutilized. Hence, not allowing yourself to do anything but focus on one specific task will actually not increase productivity for creative work. It will only increase productivity for assembly line work (see Economic degrees of freedom) or the management thereof.”

这是一个很有趣的观点：一个管理者在处理简单任务的时候可以把时间分成小份，比如15分钟。但对于创造者来说，肯定不能每15分钟做一件事，然后切换到下一样完全不同的事，因为context switch会非常花费时间，往往在做下一件事的时候潜意识里还在处理上一件事。作者还表达了一个观点，比如我们在做某件不相干的事的时候意识中突然会闪现一些其他事的灵感，这是潜意识的作用，我们可以根据优先级的不同，either把灵感记下来并写好什么时候去处理，or马上去处理。作者个人会同时做4-6个项目，这样可以让自己的潜意识在消化问题的同时，可以做其他事，减少down time，我觉得如果是做4-6个非常高压的项目的话，非常不推荐，应该控制在2个以内，其他的2-4个应该是没有压力的项目或者优先级比较低没有很紧张的ddl，即使没做好也不会影响大局。

“It should be clear that the more diverse and independent the parts of the system are, and the more complex the system itself is, the greater its survival rate. Conversely, a simple, specialized system with interdependent parts, like a career professional, is likely to break as soon as circumstances change”

由很多独立的子系统组成的复杂系统的存活率会很高，相反，子系统间如果相关度、依赖度越高，只针对某种目的存在的特殊化系统，在情况发生改变的时候越容易产生问题。上图在3中提到过，如果一个人对于单个点的知识非常丰富，那他转移专业的成本就会非常高，而如果对于多个领域都有相当的理解，那切换赛道就会信手拈来。