The world is full of wasted motion

Bleh, there’s enough efficiency porn out there already. There is such a thing as balance and it’s important. To me the society we live in that’s all about optimization and the management of the world/life as some technical apparatus or system is quite empty and I think a big reason a lot of people who are extremely “successful” sometimes grapple with severe depression and dissatisfaction in spite of all their material success.

George Bataille had a theory that excess and pointless expenditure was actually integral to the well being of human societies (his explanation for why ancient societies participated in practices that were, from an economic standpoint, totally wasteful, such as extreme rituals of extravagance, sacrifice, etc.) humans need a release valve, and I think “wasted energy”, debauchery, etc. is precisely this mechanism—even in minor ways.

> 80% of every proof is garbage - it’s a series of mindless algebra, and doing the obvious thing. When my goal is to learn, I want to find that 20% that is insightful, the steps that I would struggle to come up with myself

Right, once we do something long enough, it’s easy to take all the bits that are the foundation for what we’re doing for granted—but not everything is about returns, there is such a thing as discipline, rigor, the traditions of the art—and while the steps are tedious, they subtly reinforce core tenants when you encounter them, and that’s important.

Take a step back. Let the time pass like sand through the hour glass. Don't try to savior it, don't try to appreciate it. Waste it, it's a luxury, you'll never have this time again. Don't feel anxious. Your anxiety is trying to pry the time out of your hands, trying to spin up your brain, let it burn some calories. Think of things to do, more better, faster. What you are doesn't matter, what you do does. Fight back, take some time for yourself. You can only ever be in the now, you are not what you've done, you are not what they tell you you are, you are not what you think you are. Nothing really matters. But there is you, and there is now. And you can observe. You need to breathe. Let it all go. You're going nowhere. You're secure in this moment. Dunes may shift and the wind will blow around you. Rain will fall on your head. Your value does not diminish. Not less or more. Feel it, you're close. It courses through you, time. Appreciate it for what it is, not for what can be done with it. Just a bit. Let go. You'll end up doing soon. Thinking. Parading some words into a line, beating them into submission for a service they don't care for. But for just one moment, utterly and completely waste time, know it's gone, you had it. It won't come back again. It's at it's most valuable in this passed form.

I thought there was no substance from the title, but developing metacognition the article is pushing is a very useful skill to capture the "last mile" of value if it exists.

Beware that all of the actionable advice the author is proposing is part of an energy game for you to expend more and there is no free lunch (i.e. requiring beans of Java to be functional today), but since our brains are very efficient, you can probably do way with this without any lasting neurotoxicity. It will however be painful to your body.

> One cause of wasted motion is being passive. Cultivate the identity of Doing Things, overcome the illusion of doing nothing and learn how to take the first step

Being passive is a way (best way?) of energy conservation: might not be the best but you know the outcome when you do nothing or just follow the flow. Trying things needs energy (time, resources etc) and the outcome is not guaranteed, but might lead you to a new optima.

Another corollary to the pareto principle is that young fields in which a very small advantage in output results in disproportionate returns are places that you can win just by putting in 5x the effort.

(Old fields that generate value in this will usually have people already asymptotically approaching 100% of the value).

"Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime–and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows." - Robert A. Heinlein "

> The default state of the world is wasted motion. This means that there is a constant fight against entropy...

That's an interesting way of phrasing things, and in this context, it reveals a sort of innate natural paradox that I find really fascinating. The author here uses "motion" both to describe natural, universal entropy ("wasted motion"), and the more productive or meaningful sort motion that is the result of deliberate, intentional human action. The thing which I find so interesting here, is that the "useful motion" which goes into building the clever hacks that the author talks about - that motion can only be judged as effective by the evaluating the degree to which it reduces the wasteful motion/ natural entropy that was present previously. Ie, meaningful and "useful" motion can only exist in opposition to the more common natural, wasted motion.

It reminds me of one the logions from an early gnostic text[1], that I had always found a bit confusing due to it's apparent insistence that "motion and rest" is key to what makes human beings special. I had mentally wrote off that saying, thinking it was either a relic of old school dualistic / karmic morality or that it was a simple "obey the sabbath" type of thing - but I'm now seeing the connection between human intellect and this sort of paradoxical type of "motion-which-reduces-motion" the author describes - and in that context "rest" could mean the the time spent introspecting, evaluating, and pivoting based on results.

To give another example that I picked up from reading "The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch, our human intellect is surprisingly unique and powerful exactly because it allows us to force the universe into states that would not otherwise arise on their own, even to the extent that we can build states which are otherwise impossible to arise in environments controlled by unchecked natural entropy. One example he gave to support this is the fact that absolute coldest place that we know of in the universe, is not in some far off galaxy - it's in a university lab that was designed and built specifically to maintain incredibly low temperatures for quantum computing research purposes.

-- [1] Gospel of Thomas, 50: http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html

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Is it fair to say that the author would want us to read the first 20% of this post?

Great article. The author uses the principle to learn more efficiently, but I've actually applied it in a different way. I have a broad interest, like many here do as demonstrated by the constantly interesting frontpage, and I like to know everything.

Since it's such a vague principle, this is a bit handwavy, but imagine peoples perception of a skilled person. Someone who has mastered 50% of a skill can be said to be able to do it, but not be very good, someone who has mastered 100% of a skill, can be said to be the legendary kind of master that's spent 10.000 hours honing it.

No one really expects someone they meet to be a master. Anyone you meet in your life, when they say they can do something because it's their work, or their hobby, you expect them to be good at it, having spent perhaps the first half of their 10.000 hours, and getting to 90%. They might have spent 10.000 hours, but it wasn't 10.000 hours of hard practice, the kind that starts out fun, but ends up being a hard grind towards the end. Imagine your surprise if you met someone and they were a professional of international renown, not just good at their jobs.

In the time it takes to become that kind of a master (about 5 years if you work at it 8 hours a day 5 days a week (remember, hard practice! not just applying things you already know)) you could have learned 5 things to 80%. That means you could have easily become a decent programmer, an enjoyable guitar player, an excellent home cook, an adept sportsman and a poet.

Note that besides taking the same amount of time, it was a lot more enjoyable and required less discipline, because it's the last 20% of mastery that takes 80% of the time, that's also where the drudgery is. Definitely not saying the drudgery isn't enjoyable, obviously it can be quite rewarding to push the boundaries of what a person can achieve, and be lauded for it. But if you seek diversity in the way you spend your time, you could be great at many things and be very satisfied as well.

I think the exposition of this piece lets down what's otherwise a pretty useful idea.

Here's how I'd phrase it: anything worth doing is a grind. It's exhausting, physically and mentally, and it's really easy to procrastinate on it or avoid it, but all that does is defer it. Rather than trying to avoid the grind, try to get the most out of it that you can -- try to get a little bit better at the thing you're grinding through each day because consistency is king.

And then one day, you wake up and the thing you are trying to do is all of a sudden very close to completion. It didn't just happen that one day, it was in process on so many days before that point. But on that day, you notice it.

I personally believe that 75% or more of what we do is not based on any thinking at all but rather comes from subconsciously copying other people. Its what we all do naturally.

So you don't really need to do deep introspection to find something more efficient. You just need to be willing to question what you are doing and do something that you know other people aren't necessarily going to like because they aren't used to it.

I believe in the Pareto Principle but I believe it's inescapable. And the author says so himself, just not in these words:

> Run experiments and try new things

Most if the things you will try will not produce desired effects. Sure, the more you try the more you will succeed, but that's still 20%, just of a larger overall expended energy.

I would actually go one step further and say 80-20 is more like 95-5. Spend enough time in corporate environment and this will become so clear. That’s the downside of service/information economy.

OK, I shared this article one day ago, and there was zero traction. Now, it says it was posted 3 hours ago, and it is on the homepage. Could someone shed some light :)?

The purpose of life is to convert energy into motion

The blog is unreadable with that font style and layout and color scheme.

There are much better themes out there for free, crystal clear and elegant.