So, everyone’s always yapping about the latest, greatest new thing, right? You know, those super complicated tools that are supposed to solve all your problems with a single click. It kinda got me thinking. What about the old ways? The simple stuff, the ‘old fashion models’ of figuring things out. Do they even have a place anymore?
I decided, just for kicks, to try one out. Not for my day job, mind you. That place is already a knot of so-called ‘modern’ systems that barely speak to each other. This was more of a personal experiment, a little project to see what’s what.
My Little Experiment
I picked a really straightforward task: trying to guess how busy my local coffee shop would get at different times. Yeah, I know, sounds a bit daft, but it was just a simple thing I could get my hands on.
Here’s how I went about it, my super ‘old fashion’ method:
- Good old observation. I actually went and sat there for a few days. Different times, different days. Just me, a notebook, and a lot of coffee. Felt like I was some kind of caffeine detective.
- Tally marks. Seriously. I drew little lines for every person who walked in. And I’d scribble down notes next to them, like ‘raining cats and dogs,’ or ‘sunny, everyone’s out,’ or ‘school holiday madness.’
- Basic math, by hand. At the end of the week, I’d just, you know, try to find some simple averages. ‘Mondays seem slow.’ ‘Fridays are bonkers after 3 PM.’ Groundbreaking stuff, I tell ya.
And you know what? It was slow. Really slow. My notebooks ended up with more coffee stains than actual data, I reckon. And my grand ‘predictions’? Well, they were okay for the super obvious things. If it was pouring rain, yeah, less people. Shocking.
But if something out of the blue happened? Like a surprise local festival or a road closure? My little ‘model’ was totally useless. Kaput. Couldn’t handle it.
What I Reckon I Learned
It really hammered home why we don’t always stick to those old ways for everything. There’s a certain charm to it, for sure. You feel really connected to what you’re doing, not just clicking buttons on a screen. You actually look at things.
But try to scale that up? Or if you need something that’s actually reliable for, say, a proper business? You’d be up a creek without a paddle. Fast.
It’s a funny old world. At my actual job, we’ve got all these incredibly complex systems. They’re supposed to be the bee’s knees, cutting edge and all that. But half the time, they’re so darn complicated that nobody really, truly understands how they’re spitting out their answers. It’s like we jumped from one extreme, where things were too simple, to another, where they’re too much of a black box.
This whole mucking about with ‘old fashion models’ wasn’t about finding some forgotten magic trick. Not at all. It was more a reminder that every tool, every method, has its time and place. And sometimes, even the simplest, most basic tools can teach you a heck of a lot about the problem you’re trying to solve. Even if they can’t solve the whole thing themselves.
It’s like, you wouldn’t use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, would you? But I see folks doing the digital equivalent of that all the time. Or the other way around, trying to build a skyscraper with a kid’s toy hammer. It’s all a bit of a muddle, isn’t it? These ‘old fashion models,’ for me, it ended up being less about the models themselves and more about thinking how we choose our tools, old or new, and how easy it is to make a mess of things if we don’t think it through.
