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drethelin comments on Stupid Questions (10/27/2014) - Less Wrong Discussion
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This may be long for a stupid question... and it's not really one question... but it seems like a safe first post kind of place! It has just been on my mind a lot the last few months.
I was recently doing a review of my workplace's management system and used personal life examples to demonstrate why the management system is (/would of been) effective. Instead of convincing anyone else, I convinced myself my life would be better off if I had a personal management system.
I've googled high and low and found nothing that I could draw on. The amount of self-help and motivational books I waded through though... that was impressive. I find it particularly interesting that it doesn't seem present regardless of culture, even for procedure-heavy ones like Japan and Korea (at least in business) or more direct/rigid like Germany. Life just happens and you muddle through.
After putting pen to paper, I realised many "deficiencies" in my own life. I don't have a records "policy" - my files are on hard drives, NAS's, couple of clouds and a drive in a bank deposit box. I have no idea how many copies of my tax returns are floating around out there. I used to track expenses, but when I wanted to see my cashflow I realised I had no data for the last 2-3 years. I recently had to run out and buy some cleaning supplies because I ran out - that sums up my inventory system. That's a major barrier to cooking at home. I'm not sure what I have for emergency supplies either. I certainly don't plan (schedule or monitor) activities in my life at all. Risk management? I think my household insurance auto-renewed but not 100% sure.
Yet, I'd be considered decently organized among my peers. That seems terrifying.
Life isn't a project, or a company, but I think the "management system" approach would be beneficial because;
It engages system 2 thinking, resulting in (presumably) better plans
It allows optimization though sharing and iteration (assuming some common approaches develop)
It helps communicating and being held accountable, least for a certain set of relationships
It helps manage change, like the move from portable drives to cloud storage, or changing insurance coverage
It increases transactional memory, where you can put trust into a system to avoid having to keep a mental maps (of files, of money, of contingencies)
It allows outsourcing since the process is relatively well defined, such as to (virtual) assistants or maid services (I believe it'd be a net economic boom)
It can help be pro-active, like staying in touch at regular intervals - both prompting and prioritizing (more to do with how you approach life)
However, my prior is that almost no one does this. The most I've seen are individual components - some people run very good household budgets. It just doesn't exist as an overall framework.
Why? Is it because it doesn't work and/or isn't a suitable approach? A lack of definition to "life" to structure around/optimize towards? Is it more emotional, not giving up control and flexibility? Not taught/not socially acceptable? Does System 1 not bother with it, leading to failure?
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I've spent some time working on this but it's tough and I'm really not sure the effort would be worthwhile. The trigger to take it seriously was a long chain of events that led to a life achievement list. It's still in brainstorming mode, but getting huge and it seems to me that I need to put a lot more effort into optimizing for it.
Just to be clear, a lot of the answers I have gotten in person have been along the lines of "pick what you want and focus on it". I think it misses what I'm trying to convey - how do you manage everything you don't focus on? Why do you do things a certain way? I want to know what to do with my copy of my taxes next time I file. I want to do it because I should and I want to know why I should. The system offers an imperative, built on the foundation of having thought it out and deciding "this is how it should be".
You might be interested in the book Getting Things Done. It was written before smartphones and cloud syncing calendars but it can easily be adapted to To-Do lists and managing your life in the modern age.
A basic summary is thus: Every action you need to do but haven't yet done is an open loop in your mind. You have to keep thinking about it until you do it, and close the loop. However, lots of things can't be done except at specific times and places. You can maintain seperate to-do lists for things that can be done anywhere (Call a friend to schedule a movie, tie your shoe, etc.), and things that need you to be at your desk, at work, or at a grocery store. Storing all the myriad things that you need to do in life in your head is stressful and difficult to successfully accomplish. If you offload this information to contextual to-do lists, you can forget about the open loop and rely on your general system to remind you if it only if you can actually do something about it. This allows you focus on things you're doing in the moment, without worrying that you're forgetting a bunch of things you still need to do.
I am working through GTD myself and will post a more extended summary in language different from the book.
Much appreciated, I'll take a look!
I think this is a large part of it, but it seems like a subset of what I'm thinking about. This is a great answer if someone came up to you and asked "how do you get things done?", and it is a pretty broad planning approach. Even better, those who use a similar system can talk about their approach, ideally sharing ideas and "best practices". Even when I googled the book, I got thousands of hits that would help me - tools, blogs, reviews. To use corporate speak, this would be a set of policies, processes and guidance... complete with workflows. It fits perfectly (this comment pending me actually reading the book!).
what I struggle with is that there doesn't seem to be anything above this. Most companies have some sort of management system that would give context to the process.
To give a corporate example applied to real life, most people don't really evaluate risk in their own life. Here at LW and such we talk about existential risk, but I'd still guess that very few have disaster supplies or plans for much more likely events (this is from recent talks triggered by http://www.shakeout.org/ ). My wife and I talked casually over dinner about earthquakes and realised this is a non-trivial problem that probably should be taken seriously. Getting home, walking long distances, bridges, what to do if our apartment isn't structurally sound or flooded, where to meet/wait if communication is impossible, what to do in winter with no heat.
The same applies to a lot of other risks - robbery, fire, financial, accidents, sickness...
Each of those can be dealt with tasks that would be governed by the GTD process, so I think it's a big part (it is either done or not!), but I feel like there is this missing umbrella that binds these things together. There seems to be a lot of social gains to it as well. Talking about disasters with our friends would lead to some pressure on them to prepare, as well as share how we would do it and possibly find shared solutions.
Example above could be replaced with less extreme examples, like how you store your files/pictures/etc or do your household budget.
I have started working on something like that a while ago.
Interesting! Did you make any further progress? I personally see a great deal of value in this kind of risk identification. A lot of risks are not easily solved (eg: just buy insurance!) or properly quantified (eg: accident insurance protects me from income loss!).
No progress, I dropped the ball because of smooth sailing in my life. Which is exactly why I should prepare for things getting worse.
But seeing as people gave upvotes, there seems to be interest. I might pick the ball up again.