achiral comments on Open thread, August 5-11, 2013 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: David_Gerard 05 August 2013 06:50AM

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Comment author: achiral 07 August 2013 05:02:36AM 1 point [-]

Those all sound like some pretty awesome activities!

My question to you, with respect, is this: why not just reduce the amount of hours per day you spend on serious, solitary intellectual work and fill the balance with externally oriented, social activities till you find a maintainable balance of sociability vs. studying?

Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but it seems you're essentially saying that when you (temporarily) hyper focus on solitary, intellectual activities you (temporarily) encounter more difficulty in conversations. This doesn't surprise me and it seems evident that the only real solution is to find the right balance for you and accept the inherent trade offs.

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 07 August 2013 09:49:17AM 3 points [-]

My question to you, with respect, is this: why not just reduce the amount of hours per day you spend on serious, solitary intellectual work and fill the balance with externally oriented, social activities till you find a maintainable balance of sociability vs. studying?

It's not like I have some slider on my desktop, with "sit in a box, autistically rocking back and forth, counting numbers" at one end, and "rakishly sample the epicurean delights of the world" at the other. I have time and work and study commitments. I have externally-imposed scheduling. I have inscrutable internal motivation levels that need to be contended with.

It's a case of resource management, and occasionally when managing those resources I'll have to focus on one area to the exclusion of another. That's fine. It's not something there's a "solution" to. It's a condition all moderately busy people have to operate under.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 August 2013 08:14:38AM 0 points [-]

why not just reduce the amount of hours per day you spend on serious, solitary intellectual work

For certain people that's not an option (“phdcomics is a documentary” -- shminux).