1) Yes, everyone’s after your time and energy. But what is it for? You got to decide—you can’t really hoard it, you must give it somewhere. As long as you’re making the decision, it’s okay to give it to people or activities clamoring for it.
2) I don’t like the idea at all. Big problems in your field are usually big for a reason. By all means, don’t just accept that: study them, think about them. Either you’ll understand why they’re hard, or you’ll come up with something interesting. But most often, you’ll understand why they’re hard. It’s probably a better use of your time to go after paths of least resistance with low(er) hanging fruits.
Going after these problems usually makes for shitty motivation. Go after something fun, go after something you like. Then you might see it through the end. If we’re using physicists as examples, Feynman is famous for investigating wobbly plates movements after Los Alamos, a direction that eventually netted him the Nobel. He did it because it felt fun.
3) Satisficing is very often useful. Especially if you’re a perfectionist. You clarified in the comment above that you were thinking about situations where you are stuck with the outcome already decided. Then it’s indeed fine to make the most of your time there, but that’s not clear from the article.
1) Getting Got is usually a failure of making a smart big-picture decision. When the average person or activity clamors for my time, I know I’d be better off literally staring at a wall introspecting, and yet it’s still difficult to refuse. I think you overestimate how easy it is to make clear-headed decisions with all the noise—Getting Gone and Getting Compact are tools for this.
2) Don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t say you should work on the hardest problems. I said you should think about why you’re not working on them.
Counterpoints:
1) Yes, everyone’s after your time and energy. But what is it for? You got to decide—you can’t really hoard it, you must give it somewhere. As long as you’re making the decision, it’s okay to give it to people or activities clamoring for it.
2) I don’t like the idea at all. Big problems in your field are usually big for a reason. By all means, don’t just accept that: study them, think about them. Either you’ll understand why they’re hard, or you’ll come up with something interesting. But most often, you’ll understand why they’re hard. It’s probably a better use of your time to go after paths of least resistance with low(er) hanging fruits.
Going after these problems usually makes for shitty motivation. Go after something fun, go after something you like. Then you might see it through the end. If we’re using physicists as examples, Feynman is famous for investigating wobbly plates movements after Los Alamos, a direction that eventually netted him the Nobel. He did it because it felt fun.
3) Satisficing is very often useful. Especially if you’re a perfectionist. You clarified in the comment above that you were thinking about situations where you are stuck with the outcome already decided. Then it’s indeed fine to make the most of your time there, but that’s not clear from the article.
1) Getting Got is usually a failure of making a smart big-picture decision. When the average person or activity clamors for my time, I know I’d be better off literally staring at a wall introspecting, and yet it’s still difficult to refuse. I think you overestimate how easy it is to make clear-headed decisions with all the noise—Getting Gone and Getting Compact are tools for this.
2) Don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t say you should work on the hardest problems. I said you should think about why you’re not working on them.
3) Agree.