It’s very easy for analytical people to notice problems and find things to complain about. But it’s important to figure out: is the thing you’re complaining about a 1⁄10 issue or a 6/10? There’s no such thing as a perfect environment, and if you are constantly complaining about 2⁄10 issues, that’s actually a good thing—it means there are no more substantive issues, otherwise you’d be focused on them. I personally don’t allow myself to get bothered by anything less than a 4⁄10.
Resolving 3⁄10 issues that you can resolve in five minutes is very valuable. With my old PC, I was switching manually to the speakers that I preferred. Sometimes this meant that applications like switched to some default “for communication” speakers. I wouldn’t rate it higher than 3⁄10 as switching speakers on zoom is not that big of a deal.
On the other hand, really looking through the Windows speaker settings, removing “speakers” that are just audio out of various devices and setting the proper defaults took me less than five minutes. I didn’t know beforehand that these default existed so, I didn’t know that the problem was solvable in five minutes.
Simply asking ChatGPT whether there’s an easy solution to your <4/10 problems can be very useful.
I would assume that this would not be categorised as “complaining”. Sure, if something is 2⁄10 bothering you and there is an easy way to fix it, then it is worth fixing, but I would assume that “being bothered” in that context means “entering the state of dissatisfaction with current affairs”.
If we take the example of my speaker recognition, I didn’t know that there was an easy way to fix it. It turned out to be fixable in five minutes but that’s not something I knew beforehand. I certainly did complain to other people when I computer put in speaker I didn’t like.
I think there are plenty of problems that people have where there’s not a solution that they can think of in five seconds but where spending five minutes of focused attention or these days just asking an LLM, can make a lot of progress on the issue.
Resolving 3⁄10 issues that you can resolve in five minutes is very valuable. With my old PC, I was switching manually to the speakers that I preferred. Sometimes this meant that applications like switched to some default “for communication” speakers. I wouldn’t rate it higher than 3⁄10 as switching speakers on zoom is not that big of a deal.
On the other hand, really looking through the Windows speaker settings, removing “speakers” that are just audio out of various devices and setting the proper defaults took me less than five minutes. I didn’t know beforehand that these default existed so, I didn’t know that the problem was solvable in five minutes.
Simply asking ChatGPT whether there’s an easy solution to your <4/10 problems can be very useful.
I would assume that this would not be categorised as “complaining”. Sure, if something is 2⁄10 bothering you and there is an easy way to fix it, then it is worth fixing, but I would assume that “being bothered” in that context means “entering the state of dissatisfaction with current affairs”.
If we take the example of my speaker recognition, I didn’t know that there was an easy way to fix it. It turned out to be fixable in five minutes but that’s not something I knew beforehand. I certainly did complain to other people when I computer put in speaker I didn’t like.
I think there are plenty of problems that people have where there’s not a solution that they can think of in five seconds but where spending five minutes of focused attention or these days just asking an LLM, can make a lot of progress on the issue.