I’m happy with this post. I think it captures something meta-level which is important in orienting to doing a good job of all sorts of work, and I occasionally want to point people to this.
Most of the thoughts probably aren’t super original, but for something this important I am surprised that there isn’t much more explicit discussion—it seems like it’s often just talked about at the level of a few sentences, and regarded as a matter of taste, or something. For people who aspire to do valuable work, I guess it’s generally worth spending a few hours a year explicitly thinking about the tradeoffs here and how to navigate them in particular situations—and then probably worth at least a bit of scaffolding or general thinking about the topic.
I’m happy with this post. I think it captures something meta-level which is important in orienting to doing a good job of all sorts of work, and I occasionally want to point people to this.
Most of the thoughts probably aren’t super original, but for something this important I am surprised that there isn’t much more explicit discussion—it seems like it’s often just talked about at the level of a few sentences, and regarded as a matter of taste, or something. For people who aspire to do valuable work, I guess it’s generally worth spending a few hours a year explicitly thinking about the tradeoffs here and how to navigate them in particular situations—and then probably worth at least a bit of scaffolding or general thinking about the topic.