Today I’m going to coin a term: the debug cycle.

Whenever trying to solve a problem or accomplish something, we typically go through a cycle.

1. Try something
2. See if it works
3. Repeat

This is a cycle, and the faster we can go through it the better.

Let me give you an example. Imagine for a minute that you were creating a website. Even if you know nothing about programming, it will still make sense.

What most coders do is get into a rhythm. (1) Make a little change in the code, (2) hit the save button, (3) reload the webpage to see how it looks. Then go back and do it again.

The debug cycle starts to happen REALLY fast. For example, many programmers start to use keyboard shortcuts. Apple-S saves it, Apple-tab switches to the other screen, and Apple-R reloads the page. (Or ctrl-s, alt-tab, ctrl-r if you’re on PC). This all happens in less than a second.

Here is a little video to illustrate.

See, nice and fast. It’s easy to test if what you’re doing is working.

Thats the key. When the cycle is fast, you are productive.

But now imagine that something slowed down your debug cycle.

Lets say, each time you wanted to test a change you had to upload the file to some server, restart a database, fill out a form, and then see the result. Suddenly your productivity plummets.

Even a small increase, of say 10 seconds, to each debug cycle is a big problem, because you repeat the cycle so many times that it adds up quickly.

The important thing to realize is that…

This idea applies to every problem you are ever going to solve

Did you ever wonder why they like to use mice in medical experiments? Well aside from the fact they are cheap and and people have fewer moral problems with it compared to, say, a kitten….mice reproduce quickly.

That means your debug cycle is shorter. You can try some gene modification on 100 different mice and in 4 weeks see how they grow up.

Why is it easier to write a good ad in Google Adwords than in the Newspaper? Adwords has a shorter debug cycle. You can see how an ad performed in just a few hours instead of a few weeks.

Why do windtunnels work? Because they shorten the debug cycle. You can build 10 different model airplanes in a week (that don’t even fly) and test them in there to see how they work before investing in a real full-size one.

Why is it hard to cure male pattern baldness? Because for any treatment you come up with it takes at least a year for a follicle to grow and see if it works.

Why is it hard to lose weight? Long debug cycle. You could try some new diet and not see any change for a month or two. Hard to know if its really working.

Bottom line, it’s difficult to measure outcomes in a long debug cycle, and to solve any problem you will need to test a lot of different ideas.

What about starting a business?

For most people, starting a business is a long debug cycle. You think about an idea for a few years, pursue venture capital for 6 months, take on the debt, finally get some funding, put a 1 year lease on an office, recruit some new hires, get lost in endless meetings, work on a project, travel to conferences, finally release a project after 4 years, and then realize the market doesn’t want it so you scrap the whole thing.

ORRR….

You could go from new business idea to launch in 1 month for $100.

By the way, in Breaking Free I have an exhaustive list of all the unnecessary stuff you can eliminate when starting a business so you can focus on what matters.

What’s the lesson?

Invest up front in making a streamlined debug cycle. It will pay off in spades down the road.

If you’re in medicine, simulate thousands of compounds on a computer instead of having to to make each one for real in a lab.

If you’re an author, post a bunch of short essays on a blog to see what people want to read before writing the whole book.

If you want to break free, test a whole bunch of small business ideas with as little time and money as humanly possible until you find one that works.

Until next time, keep breaking free…
Brian Armstrong

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