You (and Nesov) may be correct that I should instead say “without having a goal to achieve”.
The reason I didn’t (though I considered it) was that:
“Am I engaged, interested, and updating?” is an easier thing for me to check for than “do I have (either a learning or an accomplishment) purpose in mind?”.
Personally, I find I can believe I have a purpose while doing a lot of inefficient busy-work. And I find that if I make sure I’m curious—curious about how to achieve my goal, which of my efforts are/aren’t helping, etc. -- I often notice short-cuts or task substitutions that accomplish more, faster.
However, 1 and 2 may both just indicate that I should learn, better, what purpose feels like. Anyone have any tips for noticing purpose and lost purpose, along the lines of Johnicholas and Theotherdave’s list of what stupidity feels like?
A worthwhile goal is one that either you reflectively endorse as a terminal value, or a subgoal of a worthwhile goal.
It may not be practical to always trace your goals back to a terminal value, so heuristics such as checking for curiosity may useful, with the usual caveat that they will be less accurate than checking the hard way. I wonder if this heuristic works well for you because you are intuitively good at being curious about things worth knowing, so asking if you are curious taps into this intuitive strength.
Personally, I find I can believe I have a purpose while doing a lot of inefficient busy-work.
One technique that comes from my experience in computer science/software engineering, is to be aware of the resource requirements for solving the problem you are working on, where resource usually refers to time. For problems that seem to have large requirements, ask is there an approach with smaller resource requirements, or is there some reason it has to be that way? If you find a better approach take it, if it has to be that way, do it the hard way. If you find yourself getting stuck on these questions after putting in an appropriate amount of effort, this technique is not helping, revert to doing it the hard way. But the key here is to be aware of your requirements so you know to ask if they could be better.
You (and Nesov) may be correct that I should instead say “without having a goal to achieve”.
The reason I didn’t (though I considered it) was that:
“Am I engaged, interested, and updating?” is an easier thing for me to check for than “do I have (either a learning or an accomplishment) purpose in mind?”.
Personally, I find I can believe I have a purpose while doing a lot of inefficient busy-work. And I find that if I make sure I’m curious—curious about how to achieve my goal, which of my efforts are/aren’t helping, etc. -- I often notice short-cuts or task substitutions that accomplish more, faster.
However, 1 and 2 may both just indicate that I should learn, better, what purpose feels like. Anyone have any tips for noticing purpose and lost purpose, along the lines of Johnicholas and Theotherdave’s list of what stupidity feels like?
A worthwhile goal is one that either you reflectively endorse as a terminal value, or a subgoal of a worthwhile goal.
It may not be practical to always trace your goals back to a terminal value, so heuristics such as checking for curiosity may useful, with the usual caveat that they will be less accurate than checking the hard way. I wonder if this heuristic works well for you because you are intuitively good at being curious about things worth knowing, so asking if you are curious taps into this intuitive strength.
One technique that comes from my experience in computer science/software engineering, is to be aware of the resource requirements for solving the problem you are working on, where resource usually refers to time. For problems that seem to have large requirements, ask is there an approach with smaller resource requirements, or is there some reason it has to be that way? If you find a better approach take it, if it has to be that way, do it the hard way. If you find yourself getting stuck on these questions after putting in an appropriate amount of effort, this technique is not helping, revert to doing it the hard way. But the key here is to be aware of your requirements so you know to ask if they could be better.