T: “Gah, I really need to write this up as a blog post. Giving an example that I’m not really into at the moment seems kind of bad. But ok, so, [[goes on a rambling five-minute monologue that starts bored and boring, until visibly excited about some random thing like the origin of writing or the implausibility of animals with toxic flesh evolving or emergent modularity enabled by gene regulatory networks or the revision theory of truth or something; see the appendix for examples]]”
Still reading the rest of this.
“Playful Thinking” (Curiosity driven exploration) may be serendipitous for other stuff you’re doing, but there isn’t a guarantee. Pursuing it because you want to might help you learn things. Overall it is (or can be) one of the ways you take care of yourself.
A focus only on value which is measurable in one way can miss important things. That doesn’t mean that way should be ignored, but by taking more ways into account, you might get a more complete picture. If in the future we have better ways of measuring important things, and you want to work on that, maybe that could make a big difference.
Overall, ‘I have to be able to justify why I’m working on this’ seems like the wrong approach. This is definitely the case for how you spend ALL of your time. This becoming the default isn’t justified. (‘Your desire to learn will help you learn.’ ‘That sounds inefficient.’ ‘What?’)
Still reading the rest of this.
“Playful Thinking” (Curiosity driven exploration) may be serendipitous for other stuff you’re doing, but there isn’t a guarantee. Pursuing it because you want to might help you learn things. Overall it is (or can be) one of the ways you take care of yourself.
A focus only on value which is measurable in one way can miss important things. That doesn’t mean that way should be ignored, but by taking more ways into account, you might get a more complete picture. If in the future we have better ways of measuring important things, and you want to work on that, maybe that could make a big difference.
Overall, ‘I have to be able to justify why I’m working on this’ seems like the wrong approach. This is definitely the case for how you spend ALL of your time. This becoming the default isn’t justified. (‘Your desire to learn will help you learn.’ ‘That sounds inefficient.’ ‘What?’)