This is great! I love it. Thanks for putting it up for discussion.
I read all the cross-links, great stuff. Hadn’t seen most of them before.
To your question about explorations, here’s what I do — every month, I debrief the past month and pick a theme for the next month. Before picking a theme, I look at what current problems I have, what opportunities I have, and what hypotheses I have about interesting stuff.
Then I pick a theme that’s most useful going forwards, and set some policies to be run for a month based on those.
December’s theme is “Build Supply” — meaning, stockpile both physical goods that I use often, and get as far ahead of schedule on intellectual work and projects, so that all work nearing deadline is complete far in advance. That includes the TSR backlog obviously, all the logistics and details for events I’m running, and any miscellaneous stuff.
November’s theme was “Trust the Process” — that was a month of doing as little freestyling as possible, and focusing in on as many best practices that we’re working perfectly as possible. That came on the heels of intense travel and a disrupted schedule in October.
I found month-long explorations on one topic to be about right. In any given month, after setting the theme, I’ll pick 3-7 supporting actions to try out for the month. Most of these are new and experimental, most of them turn out to be not worth keeping, and I’ll never do them again. But most months, I pick up 1-3 new techniques or good ideas and keep them going forwards.
I find the month is a pretty good window for this type of work. Long enough to persist and get gains, short enough not to get bored.
Thanks for this post, I greatly enjoyed it. Salut. Also if anyone has any questions about TSR, I’m happy to answer about whatever I’m thinking, books, references, the writing process, or whatever else. It’s pretty intense to put out a well-researched 3k-6k essay every week, but it’s been a great joy and I’ve been very happy people like them so much.
Any other questions or riffing on training, would be happy so regards. Regards and such, nice to be back on Less(er)Wrong.
This is great! I love it. Thanks for putting it up for discussion.
I read all the cross-links, great stuff. Hadn’t seen most of them before.
To your question about explorations, here’s what I do — every month, I debrief the past month and pick a theme for the next month. Before picking a theme, I look at what current problems I have, what opportunities I have, and what hypotheses I have about interesting stuff.
Then I pick a theme that’s most useful going forwards, and set some policies to be run for a month based on those.
December’s theme is “Build Supply” — meaning, stockpile both physical goods that I use often, and get as far ahead of schedule on intellectual work and projects, so that all work nearing deadline is complete far in advance. That includes the TSR backlog obviously, all the logistics and details for events I’m running, and any miscellaneous stuff.
November’s theme was “Trust the Process” — that was a month of doing as little freestyling as possible, and focusing in on as many best practices that we’re working perfectly as possible. That came on the heels of intense travel and a disrupted schedule in October.
I found month-long explorations on one topic to be about right. In any given month, after setting the theme, I’ll pick 3-7 supporting actions to try out for the month. Most of these are new and experimental, most of them turn out to be not worth keeping, and I’ll never do them again. But most months, I pick up 1-3 new techniques or good ideas and keep them going forwards.
I find the month is a pretty good window for this type of work. Long enough to persist and get gains, short enough not to get bored.
Thanks for this post, I greatly enjoyed it. Salut. Also if anyone has any questions about TSR, I’m happy to answer about whatever I’m thinking, books, references, the writing process, or whatever else. It’s pretty intense to put out a well-researched 3k-6k essay every week, but it’s been a great joy and I’ve been very happy people like them so much.
Any other questions or riffing on training, would be happy so regards. Regards and such, nice to be back on Less(er)Wrong.