We live in a society that always thinks about winning and winning and we have turned the human being into something specifically made to win over the rest, to be above the others.
To success means to be better than others, to success means to earn more money, to get the best position, to have a better title on LinkedIn, to success means always making the best move.
It is possible that throughout your career in technology, you have experienced some, if not all, of the above points either in others or in yourself.
Fortunately, it seems to be something that is easily fixed, with enough time and experience.
These needs to be better and to win end up causing many people to get lost along the way and, instead of understanding failures as part of the journey and knowledge, they understand them as mistakes and penalties. And how not to get lost?
To my surprise, I learned this lesson by listening to a professional video game player. Professional players are usually people who have seen failure very closely and who have managed to reach a very small percentage of their profession, which basically gives them something to live for.
That player explained that casual people always try to make the best move with the elements they have, that the best move is often the most complex and the one that can make you lose against stronger rivals but win against the average. This can help you to stop being a bad player but it will not help you reach the top.
And how do they do it? They mostly base their strategy on "the least bad move" which statistically and in the long term, gives you regularity and if you maintain it for long enough it will eventually make you a professional, because the least bad move can make you lose but in the long run it is much more likely that you will end up winning.
And then I wondered, how can I apply something like this to my profession? And the truth is that we cannot lack examples.
Since 100% test coverage does not provide much more than 32% coverage in which you are sure that the important things have been tested.
That it is better to go to production with 3 out of 6 stories done than try a perfect sprint and need 12 hours per day. Or that it is better to have a project with real users and a very simple architecture than to have the best architecture in the world but no one uses your product.
Let's remember that there are startups being sold for thousands and they are just a few slides… As people who really like technology, we may not go to that extreme, but knowing how to apply these rules and many others that will surely occur to you can be the difference between a Minimum VIABLE Product and an idea that did not work because: we had "bad luck" or we "did everything right".
And that's when I wonder… What if at the end, the best move is the least bad move?
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