Trade-off as a design principle

I like to think of trade-off as a design principle. It can be used as a guide when we have to choose among two or more options. So a pre-condition is that there must be a choice to be made, which is more often than not. It's just that we fail to see some situations as choices because of our biases. For example, we may have used a tool in a certain way for so long that we box our thinking that this is the only way to use the tool. It's like having a swiss knife in your pocket but alway pulling out a blade inclines us to think that it can only be used as a blade. This is the 'trade-off' in our evolutionary mechanics at play trying to conserve energy by trading-off to identify newness of something.

Tip: Pause and consider options.

print('hello')
def greet():
    return 'Hello'

An archaic example

One of the ideas in history is the archaic example of not looking at things that have been done before. This may or may not be relevant for the situation at hand but it does provide us with some level of semblance that we think it may be false.

Some thoughts

• There may be a choice when we think we don't have one.
• There may be multiple choices when we think it is only binary.
• Pause and think.