Skip to the last 3 paragraphs if too long.
What should I do today? This infamous question. I find the start of the day sets the precedent for the remainder—consciously or unconsciously. When you’re not severely unemployed, at least you have somewhere to be most days or at least some kind of tasks to do. But I’ve been in a kind of state of perpetual free-time for a while. You know it’s kind of my dream, and many others’, to have to real financial obligations, no boss demanding from you, a long life ahead of you. But somehow I find myself lost, confused, anxious. Maybe operating “as your own boss” and pursuing meaningful personal projects takes extreme discipline and resolve. Probably clear thinking as well.
So I’m still here wondering. Lunch is in an hour. Certainly I could find something to kill an hour with: wait out my time until I can go to my greatest hedonisitc craving. I feel most carnal when I eat. “Killing an hour” waiting to be a hog would set perhaps one of the worst precedents possible and possibly start a depressive episode.
So should I write down a list of things to do? This writing has been a fun exercise, but is starting to feel like procrastination. Perhaps I am missing a key insight. What I really want to do is work on the thing that will fill me up with enthusiasm to do other things. (THIS DOES NOT MEAN READING THROUGH ENDLESS BLOG POSTS, MAYBE 1 OR 2 USEFUL ONES, BUT IT RATHER INVOLVES ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING, PRODUCING SOMETHING, LEARNING SOMETHING). I really should try to solve the most important problem right?
So, I think the most important problem is what in the world should I do in the next year, in the next 5 years, and with my life? Narrowing down, what should I do professionally? My current situation: I will have a Chemistry degree from a top 20 (though lesser known) university. I don’t know or much like Chemistry though. Biology is ok. Healthcare is ok. What I am REALLY interested in is neuroscience/mindfulness/meditation (very important tool to lessen suffering), neurotechnology more broadly, startups, mental health, maybe AI/ML (though it’s over my head right now). These are my current passions (though my passions seem to shift every couple months).
So what are my current options? Find research in mindfulness. Find people at the cutting edge of mindfulness. Find startups in mindfulness. Qualia Research Institute? I’m kind of obsessed with my subjective experience. A mindful populations would be so beautiful. In very practical terms, I could try to get a job in operations at a startup. Build up career capital/knowledge and and found a company. Does a CS master’s make sense? Does an applied math master’s make sense? How would they relate to mindfulness? Do I really want to do a startup? I want a mission, a way to change the world. I want a space that is looser, where I can express myself. I want to be around innovative, intelligent, forward-looking people.
If there’s nothing else I learned from this writing, it’s that I need to be honest about what I want. Be clear about what I want and the forces that drive me. Being driven by unknown, unidentified forces, usually emotional forces makes me a bad decision-maker.
The project that has the best chance of drastically accelerating the acquisition of mindfulness is the SEMA lab at University of Arizona. They essentially use a fancy helmet to fire ultrasounds at specific regions of the brain, temporarily downmodulating those regions. The research is still early stage, but from what I’ve heard this can have an enormous impact on meditation depending on which regions they choose to fire at. In practical terms this would involve graduate studies in neuroscience in labs working with intra-cranial ultrasounds.
All of these are very broad and far-mode topics. What specific puzzles fascinate you? What style of problems do you enjoy the mechanics of solving? If you don’t know, then what haven’t you tried?
Once you’ve identified some analytical and problem-solving tools you enjoy, then applying them to topics you care about becomes feasible. Major bonus if these aren’t the “common” tools in that space, and you can combine two or more disciplines. For a lot of things, this is far more productive than trying to get good enough to make a difference in an established pattern.
Can you give some examples of problem-solving tools? Are examples modeling using differential equations, software engineering, organizing people?
I was thinking of things like modeling, numeric analysis, various ML inference and clustering techniques. Building end-to-end tools like apps and websites. Some kinds of research summaries or publication searches to figure out the next step in a specific query.
Less so “software engineering” or “organizing people”, which are incredibly important, but too diffuse to actually do as a goal. They are things you’ll get good at while pursuing actual topics and deliverables you care about.