Lack of progress exposed by the Canary MacGuffin
I&#x27;m likely in a Canary MacGuffin situation right now. What is the reason?<p>I&#x27;ve been given a task I don&#x27;t know how to do. So I&#x27;m working diligently on learning enough about it. But because I don&#x27;t know how to do it, there are an infinite number of concepts that may or may not be required to complete the task.<p>So, I am using the time productively in the sense of breaking apart each piece I don&#x27;t understand, building it myself, learning about it, and moving on to another one.<p>But I haven&#x27;t collected the key from the shop. Every day, I write down what I need to do again, and it changes and evolves as I learn things. I try again to complete the task, fail again, use it as an opportunity to learn about that piece.<p>If I had just got the key, maybe the task is complete, but I am no closer to being able to obtain a different key, or providing any value on that surface area.<p>So I&#x27;m optimizing for my ability to get keys in the future, not getting this particular key.<p>Is that good? Bad? Lots of arguments in both directions I think. Maybe my optimizations are 25% what they could be with direct help. But having experienced direct help, what it actually means is someone talks over my head no matter how much I say I don&#x27;t understand.<p>They don&#x27;t get just how far away I am. Given the constraints, all that can be done is to improve to the point where their help, is help.<p>Hopefully that made some level of sense.