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wwa comments on Open Thread: How much strategic thinking have you done recently? - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: Emile 28 August 2013 11:48AM

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Comment author: wwa 28 August 2013 02:39:21PM 0 points [-]
  • yes. I tend to reevaluate goals frequently (at least weekly)

  • yes to the extent of future uncertainty. I am free to change my goals at any point, after all.

  • yes... (obviously?) I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone could not do that.

  • if you would call it "a system", I try to restate nearest action that brings me closer to achieving my goal every day. More often than not the action is "wait" (until you acquire enough money/power/influence to make something happen, until you have enough information to make a decision, etc...)

Comment author: Emile 28 August 2013 02:46:38PM 2 points [-]

(in reply to "If you're facing big problems or annoyances, have you thought of ways of solving them?")

yes... (obviously?) I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone could not do that.

Well, a pretty frequent alternative is complaining a lot and looking for sympathy. Another is blaming someone else.

Comment author: ChristianKl 28 August 2013 03:13:50PM 0 points [-]

Well, a pretty frequent alternative is complaining a lot and looking for sympathy. Another is blaming someone else.

I think if you would ask those people they would also say yes, that they are thinking about ways of solving their problems.

Comment author: JacekLach 28 August 2013 06:53:54PM 1 point [-]

I think if you would ask those people they would also say yes, that they are thinking about ways of solving their problems.

Not necessarily. They might say it's too big to solve, or "it's not really a big deal" when it obviously is, or that it's not their responsibility to solve, or any of multum other excuses that validate not changing.

Comment author: CAE_Jones 28 August 2013 11:41:14PM *  1 point [-]

Well, a pretty frequent alternative is complaining a lot and looking for sympathy. Another is blaming someone else.

I think if you would ask those people they would also say yes, that they are thinking about ways of solving their problems.

I do all three! Except I'm falling behind on the "look for ways to solve problems" part, for reasons that usually turn into horrible emotastic essays on livejournal that are statistically indistinguishable from normal whining. So I expect the same reaction that normal whining gets--which is to say, nothing useful.

I think I should make "get out of this situation and get into such a state that you aren't statistically likely to die from oversleeping/depression/lack of exercise/lack of social activity in the next ten years" a very immediate goal, but to the best I can figure, all I can really do is wait and hope my family will actually cooperate and get me into my own place this fall (they've been insisting this would happen pretty much every three months since spring 2012). The trouble is that most of my options feel very reactive rather than proactive, which is no way to improve anything.