I thought my answer worked for that case as well: choosing the amount of time to spend on a project looks like choosing to not abandon the project when it should be continued (out of abstract consideration of what projects are important). The alternative, abandoning of projects, bears no emotional valence, so costs no effort.
What I mean by perfectionism is a desire for a certain unusually high level of challenge and thoroughness. It’s not about high valuation according to a more abstract or otherwise relevant measure/goal. So making a process “more perfect” in this sense means bringing challenge and thoroughness closer to the emotionally determined comfortable levels (in particular, it might involve making something less challenging if it was too challenging originally). The words “more perfect” aren’t particularly apt for this idea.
Why novel unimportant things specifically? That would be mostly about fiction/games/tv shows. Maybe I’m looking at ratings/reviews/screenshots more than typical in proportion to actually watching/reading/playing. (The games are always on impossible/deathworld/etc. difficulty and never completed.) I’m certainly aware of much more media than I’ve actually experienced, additionally because of general dislike of novel activities (for example, I’m avoiding movies altogether). This seems related, but I don’t have a specific story for the relation.
(I’ve now edited this comment about ten times, and re-read even more times, which is typical for anything longer than a couple of sentences. Thus “commenting on LW” eats up enough time to meaningfully share time budget with other fruitless entertainment such as fiction/tv shows, even when I’m commenting an order of magnitude less than I used to years ago.)
What I mean by perfectionism is a desire for a certain unusually high level of challenge and thoroughness. It’s not about high valuation according to a more abstract or otherwise relevant measure/goal. So making a process “more perfect” in this sense means bringing challenge and thoroughness closer to the emotionally determined comfortable levels (in particular, it might involve making something less challenging if it was too challenging originally). The words “more perfect” aren’t particularly apt for this idea.
I thought my answer worked for that case as well: choosing the amount of time to spend on a project looks like choosing to not abandon the project when it should be continued (out of abstract consideration of what projects are important). The alternative, abandoning of projects, bears no emotional valence, so costs no effort.
Do you think that the process by which you get to rarely encountered unimportant stuff is perfect, or could you bring more perfection to the process?
What I mean by perfectionism is a desire for a certain unusually high level of challenge and thoroughness. It’s not about high valuation according to a more abstract or otherwise relevant measure/goal. So making a process “more perfect” in this sense means bringing challenge and thoroughness closer to the emotionally determined comfortable levels (in particular, it might involve making something less challenging if it was too challenging originally). The words “more perfect” aren’t particularly apt for this idea.
Why novel unimportant things specifically? That would be mostly about fiction/games/tv shows. Maybe I’m looking at ratings/reviews/screenshots more than typical in proportion to actually watching/reading/playing. (The games are always on impossible/deathworld/etc. difficulty and never completed.) I’m certainly aware of much more media than I’ve actually experienced, additionally because of general dislike of novel activities (for example, I’m avoiding movies altogether). This seems related, but I don’t have a specific story for the relation.
(I’ve now edited this comment about ten times, and re-read even more times, which is typical for anything longer than a couple of sentences. Thus “commenting on LW” eats up enough time to meaningfully share time budget with other fruitless entertainment such as fiction/tv shows, even when I’m commenting an order of magnitude less than I used to years ago.)
Ahh interesting, thanks for sharing!