If you are good at your job, you won’t be looking for a gorilla that has no meaning in a chart like this. Does it look like something you should be concerned about? No…move on. Does it look like something you need to be concerned about? Look at it and identify it.

Back in the day when I was doing teaching artificial intelligence to computers by having them ‘watch’ humans do their work, I got use to seeing experts spend 10 seconds to rate their stimulus…something that would take non-experts around 3 minutes…and their ratings were statistically far better than the folks that spent minutes and found the red herrings we threw into them.

Pretty much, you have to define ‘what are you missing’. If you are a physician, you are missing seeing 9 more patients and correctly helping them, for the one you miss the piece of information that while interesting to a non-expert, holds no additional information for the expert.

I recently heard our greatest asset can also be our biggest burden. I hear a lot about focus. While focus may be what lets us accomplish more than normal. It’s a good reminder to not lose the forest for the trees.

May help explain why base camp has no Gantt charts? You guys might be missing the important things for teams with your focus.

I used to teach people how to drive, and one of the things I said over and over was, you only see what you think about! That is why so many people pull out in front of motorcycles. They are looking for cars, not bikes, so they “don’t see” the bikers.

Thierry, from TDM

@clif I think the point isn’t the gorilla, the point is that most folks tend to only be looking for things they are already aware of. What about the things you may not be aware of?

My background is in psychology. I realize what the point is. The fact is experts ignore the noise and focus on the signal. Gorilla? Noise. Adds nothing to the value of the interpretation.