[stse]

This is a great post and should almost be a sticky here on Hacker News. I've been involved in some performance oriented activities both in school, business, sports and the military. I have never seen anyone succeed by focusing on the problems.

When focusing on problems or prematurely on the solution, you'll get anxious and start seeing problems everywhere. The planning process will get more important then the actual implementation and you'll focus on the smallest problems. Even things that will go away by themselves.

Then without knowing it you'll be one of those people who asks "why?" instead of "how?". And I, like most, don't want to be around a person like that.