PESSIMISTIC TIME KEEPER

July 25th, 2019

Hofstadter’s Law states:  It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

This law is comically and infuriatingly recursive. We project how long a project will take, one we’ve never undertaken, and invariably we grossly underestimate how long it will take.    Construction projects present a fabulous example of this.  With so much work contracted out, and the whole process becoming decentralized, getting a handle on how long each part will take becomes more and more difficult.

Add to this the strange way that time dilates from a subjective point of view.  Some minutes can drag on forever, while a fun day seems to evaporate before we can really sink our teeth into it.

In addition to this, work also seems to expand to fill the time allotted for it. 

All three of these phenomena combined, it seems impossible that we can ever get a clear idea of what we can and will get done.

We have two options.  When it comes to deadline agreements with other people, we can inflate the time with the hope that we will deliver before, or we can give a tighter deadline and risk missing it.

Giving a later deadline might seem wise, but as mentioned, work has a strange inflational quality and will probably fill this buffer time.

It stands sensible to reason that the opposite is also true.  If work can expand, then perhaps it can be compressed.  The risk is that lower quality work will result from being rushed..

So which to go for?

Is there anyway to have our cake and eat it too? Can we compress work so that we have time left over?

The question remains open and probably depends on the project and the situation.  For those things that we have enough experience doing, we might be more accurate with our realistic timeline.   But for the unknown, chances are we’ll ned to work fast and with a generous deadline.

BORING WORKS BUT ANXIETY IS EXCITING

July 24th, 2019

The words Excitingand Nervousform a Rivalnymic pair.  In short they are essentially the same thing with polar opposite emotional identities. 

Anxiety as word describes much the same that nervous does.  The emotional identity of anxiety is just more concentrated, distilled into an affliction, one for which medications can be created and sold for.

Now, to be clear, just about no one who feels anxiety is going to claim that is it excitingor that it’s something they are creating and somehow enjoying in some kind of perverse way.

But the curative tools that most effectively battle this state of excitement are simply the opposite of anything exciting:

a well managed to-do list

meditation,

routine exercise

consistent sleep

Excitement, whether positive or negative, simply tries to breed more of itself.  We try to cure anxiety by going out and having a good time, when really, this merely replaces one excitement for another, and inevitably, the slip back from some positive sort of excitement to a negative one is just as quick to arise.

Doing the boring things is counter-intuitive, even if it seems like a logical no-brainer.  But that’s the thing: what is intuitive is already not using that executive thoughtful part of the brain.  Intuition is more about emotion.  Emotions like excitement, and the intuitive solution to a negative excitement is a positive excitement.  Hence the counter-intuitive realization of slowing down and concentrating on the boring things.

We can rephrase these ideas in simpler, grander and primordial terms:  chaos & order.

Chaos breeds more chaos, not matter how good or bad it feels.

The answer to chaos is sorting it out. Creating order.

The answer is, well, kind of boring.

This episode references Episode 293: Rivalnym

EXHAUSTED BATTERY

July 23rd, 2019

Allowing a battery to go to 0% damages the battery significantly.  It’ll be possible to get the battery fully charged again, but it will run out much quicker.  At the same time, charging a battery to 100% isn’t that great either and also injures the life of the battery.

People are in some sense, quite similar.  We do best with daily sprints of work and nightly rest in order to recharge. 

It doesn’t take much putzing around in this world to experience just how haggard and hindered it feels to burn the candle at both ends for too long.

But likewise, most all of us know that strange phenomenon of feeling tired after getting an extraordinary amount of sleep.

Like the battery, one is certainly worse than the other.  Best to oversleep than overwork.

But even better is to keep the equation balanced. There’s always tomorrow for more work, and if we overdo it today, our ability to stay consistent tomorrow drops. 

CONQUERTIZE

July 22nd, 2019

Priority as an idea has bloated into something it doesn’t really mean.  We think of a to-do list, an order of importance, but priority refers to just one thing, the only thing, the priority, the prior.

A funny and useful little word that has been hopping around the last few years isconquertize.  A simple way to interpret this word is to think of

prioritizing the things we conquer.

This may relate to an order of operations.  An easy way to think of the order of operations is that socks go before shoes.  To attempt the reverse order is, well, ill-advised.

If we can conquer our to-do list in the right order, this also frees up the lost meaning of priority.  For example, if having as much freedom of attention and timeis our priority, which gives rise to the more enjoyable parts of life: spending time with family, working on side projects we are curious about, reading, etc, then this priority gives rise to a logic in which we can conquertize the problems we tackle in life.

Money often comes into sharp focus at this point. Most people make a big trade-off with time in order to have enough money to sustain some standard of living.  It’s an ironic tragedy of the modern age to have a lovely standard of living and no time to actually live it.

Establishing time as the priorityinstantly recalibrates the logic of conquertizing our problems.  Suddenly the eternal question of “what should I concentrate on?” has a clear and present answer.

Conquertizing can be more than an odd replacement for the way we use the word ‘prioritize’.  How exactly can we prioritize if we haven’t actually established the priority?  Conquertize can be a word that electrifies our logic of operation, aligning an order of operation with our most important desires.

This episode references Episode 352: Order of Operations and Episode 10: Priorities.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: SHUFFLING PRIORITIES

July 21st, 2019

Lucilius was on a silent retreat, deep in the woods at a quiet monastery, meditating in the company of others who sought the experience.  All who took part and even those who ran the monastery were forbidden from speaking in order to honor the wish of the man who had built the monastery, knowing full well that this silence would aid the journey of all those who sought a better mind.

After many days in silent contemplation, sitting with all the rest in the great hall, Lucilius sensed something amiss and opened his eyes.  One of the others had entered the great hall and the man was frantically waving his hands with an incredible look of urgency.  Lucilius quickly got up and followed the direction the man indicated.  Lucilius turned a corner and saw in the kitchen a fire had started, growing from the oven and licking the ceiling as it grew and spread.

Lucilius quickly turned back to the great hall where dozens of others sat in meditation and yelled, “fire!”