Context is underrated

Imagine you studied woodwork in college and you’re thinking of starting a carpentry table business. College taught you the woodworking skills - how to use a sander, hammer, and a saw. You’re equipped with the knowledge and tools to build a table, but here are some reasons why you might fail:

If you build it, will they come? Short answer, no they won’t. You need a marketing and distribution strategy that captures your customers’ attention

Does my table solve a different problem from what’s already available? Building similar tables to those found at Ikea is not at all enticing to prospective customers. You need to solve a different problem, or find much better ways to solve the same problem.

Should I rope in my friends from college? Having three expert woodworkers sitting around without orders from customers is not at all productive. It could be better to involve a marketing expert instead.

The point of this woodworking example is that the determinants of a successful project or business is so much more than the tools used. Focusing too much on tools without context makes us short-sighted; it makes us prone to miss the forest for the trees. Having context is spending time to climb a tree just to ensure we’re bashing through the forest in the right direction.

Seek context first, as context sheds light onto your situation which then helps you decide on what problems to solve by giving you possible paths to take.

If you’re a programmer, don’t only focus on the latest tools or most efficient algorithms. Having context is solving a problem that customers actually care about. If you’re working in data, don’t only pursue the latest algorithms. Taking the time to understand the main business levers and edge cases will help you and the business make a much better decision. After all, data alone without any context is just numerals, and numerals without any context is just symbols. Using simple business rules may beat a complicated ML model due to business rules having more signal than noise.

When you think you can see the big picture, pause again and zoom out further. Having better context is underrated.