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A collection of Stubs.
In light of SDR's comment yesterday, instead of writing a new post today I compiled my list of ideas I wanted to write about, partly to lay them out there and see if any stood out as better than the rest, and partly so that maybe they would be a little more out in the wild than if I hold them until I get around to them. I realise there is not a thesis in this post, but I figured it would be better to write one of these than to write each in it's own post with the potential to be good or bad.
Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/many-draft-concepts/
I create ideas at about the rate of 3 a day, without trying to. I write at about a rate of 1.5 a day. Which leaves me always behind. Even if I write about the best ideas I can think of, some good ones might never be covered. This is an effort to draft out a good stack of them so that maybe it can help me not have to write them all out, by better defining which ones are the good ones and which ones are a bit more useless.
With that in mind, in no particular order - a list of unwritten posts:
From my old table of contents
Goals of your lesswrong group – As a guided/workthrough exercise in deciding why the group exists and what it should do. Help people work out what they want out of it (do people know)? setting goals, doing something particularly interesting or routine, having fun, changing your mind, being activists in the world around you. Whatever the reasons you care about, work them out and move towards them. Nothing particularly groundbreaking in the process here. Sit down with the group with pens and paper, maybe run a resolve cycle, maybe talk about ideas and settle on a few, then decide how to carry them out. Relevant links: Sydney meetup, group resources (estimate 2hrs to write)
Goals interrogation + Goal levels – Goal interrogation is about asking <is this thing I want to do actually a goal of mine> and <is my current plan the best way to achieve that>, goal levels are something out of Sydney Lesswrong that help you have mutual long term goals and supporting short term goal. There are 3 main levels, Dream, Year, Daily (or approximate) you want dream goals like going to the moon, you want yearly goals like getting another year further in your degree and you want daily goals like studying today that contribute to the upper level goals. Any time you are feeling lost you can look at the guide you set out for yourself and use it to direct you. (3hrs)
How to human – A zero to human guide. A guide for basic functionality of a humanoid system. Something of a conglomeration of maslow, mental health, so you feel like shit and system thinking. Am I conscious?Am I breathing? Am I bleeding or injured (major or minor)? Am I falling or otherwise in danger and about to cause the earlier questions to return false? Do I know where I am? Am I safe? Do I need to relieve myself (or other bodily functions, i.e. itchy)? Have I had enough water? sleep? food? Is my mind altered (alcohol or other drugs)? Am I stuck with sensory input I can't control (noise, smells, things touching me)? Am I too hot or too cold? Is my environment too hot or too cold? Or unstable? Am I with people or alone? Is this okay? Am I clean (showered, teeth, other personal cleaning rituals)? Have I had some sunlight and fresh air in the past few days? Have I had too much sunlight or wind in the past few days? Do I feel stressed? Okay? Happy? Worried? Suspicious? Scared? Was I doing something? What am I doing? do I want to be doing something else? Am I being watched (is that okay?)? Have I interacted with humans in the past 24 hours? Have I had alone time in the past 24 hours? Do I have any existing conditions I can run a check on - i.e. depression? Are my valuables secure? Are the people I care about safe? (4hrs)
List of common strategies for getting shit done – things like scheduling/allocating time, pomodoros, committing to things externally, complice, beeminder, other trackers. (4hrs)
List of superpowers and kryptonites – when asking the question “what are my superpowers?” and “what are my kryptonites?”. Knowledge is power; working with your powers and working out how to avoid your kryptonites is a method to improve yourself. What are you really good at, and what do you absolutely suck at and would be better delegating to other people. The more you know about yourself, the more you can do the right thing by your powers or weaknesses and save yourself troubles.
List of effective behaviours – small life-improving habits that add together to make awesomeness from nothing. And how to pick them up. Short list: toothbrush in the shower, scales in front of the fridge, healthy food in the most accessible position in the fridge, make the unhealthy stuff a little more inacessible, keep some clocks fast - i.e. the clock in your car (so you get there early), prepare for expected barriers ahead of time (i.e. packing the gym bag and leaving it at the door), and more.
Stress prevention checklist – feeling off? You want to have already outsourced the hard work for “things I should check on about myself” to your past self. Make it easier for future you. Especially in the times that you might be vulnerable. Generate a list of things that you want to check are working correctly. i.e. did I drink today? Did I do my regular exercise? Did I take my medication? Have I run late today? Do I have my work under control?
Make it easier for future you. Especially in the times that you might be vulnerable. – as its own post in curtailing bad habits that you can expect to happen when you are compromised. inspired by candy-bar moments and turning them into carrot-moments or other more productive things. This applies beyond diet, and might involve turning TV-hour into book-hour (for other tasks you want to do instead of tasks you automatically do)
A p=np approach to learning – Sometimes you have to learn things the long way; but sometimes there is a short cut. Where you could say, “I wish someone had just taken me on the easy path early on”. It’s not a perfect idea; but start looking for the shortcuts where you might be saying “I wish someone had told me sooner”. Of course the answer is, “but I probably wouldn’t have listened anyway” which is something that can be worked on as well. (2hrs)
Rationalists guide to dating – Attraction. Relationships. Doing things with a known preference. Don’t like unintelligent people? Don’t try to date them. Think first; then act - and iteratively experiment; an exercise in thinking hard about things before trying trial-and-error on the world. Think about places where you might meet the kinds of people you want to meet, then use strategies that go there instead of strategies that flop in the general direction of progress. (half written)
Training inherent powers (weights, temperatures, smells, estimation powers) – practice makes perfect right? Imagine if you knew the temperature always, the weight of things by lifting them, the composition of foods by tasting them, the distance between things without measuring. How can we train these, how can we improve. Probably not inherently useful to life, but fun to train your system 1! (2hrs)
Strike to the heart of the question. The strongest one; not the one you want to defeat – Steelman not Strawman. Don’t ask “how do I win at the question”; ask, “am I giving the best answer to the best question I can give”. More poetic than anything else - this post would enumerate the feelings of victory and what not to feel victorious about, as well as trying to feel what it's like to be on the other side of the discussion to yourself, frustratingly trying to get a point across while a point is being flung at yourself. (2hrs)
How to approach a new problem – similar to the “How to solve X” post. But considerations for working backwards from a wicked problem, as well as trying “The least bad solution I know of”, Murphy-jitsu, and known solutions to similar problems. Step 0. I notice I am approaching a problem.
Turning Stimming into a flourish – For autists, to make a presentability out of a flaw.
How to manage time – estimating the length of future tasks (and more), covered in notch system, and do tasks in a different order. But presented on it's own.
Spices – Adventures in sensory experience land. I ran an event of spice-smelling/guessing for a group of 30 people. I wrote several documents in the process about spices and how to run the event. I want to publish these. As an exercise - it's a fun game of guess-the-spice.
Wing it VS Plan – All of the what, why, who, and what you should do of the two. Some people seem to be the kind of person who is always just winging it. In contrast, some people make ridiculously complicated plans that work. Most of us are probably somewhere in the middle. I suggest that the more of a planner you can be the better because you can always fall back on winging it, and you probably will. But if you don't have a plan and are already winging it - you can't fall back on the other option. This concept came to me while playing ingress, which encourages you to plan your actions before you make them.
On-stage bias – The changes we make when we go onto a stage include extra makeup to adjust for the bright lights, and speaking louder to adjust for the audience which is far away. When we consider the rest of our lives, maybe we want to appear specifically X (i.e, confident, friendly) so we should change ourselves to suit the natural skews in how we present based on the "stage" we are appearing on. appear as the person you want to appear as, not the person you naturally appear as.
Creating a workspace – considerations when thinking about a “place” of work, including desk, screen, surrounding distractions, and basically any factors that come into it. Similar to how the very long list of sleep maintenance suggestions covers environmental factors in your sleep environment but for a workspace.
Posts added to the list since then
Doing a cost|benefit analysis - This is something we rely on when enumerating the options and choices ahead of us, but something I have never explicitly looked into. Some costs that can get overlooked include: Time, Money, Energy, Emotions, Space, Clutter, Distraction/Attention, Memory, Side effects, and probably more. I'd like to see a How to X guide for CBA. (wikipedia)
Extinction learning at home - A cross between intermittent reward (the worst kind of addiction), and what we know about extinguishing it. Then applying that to "convincing" yourself to extinguish bad habits by experiential learning. Uses the CFAR internal Double Crux technique, precommit yourself to a challenge, for example - "If I scroll through 20 facebook posts in a row and they are all not worth my time, I will be convinced that I should spend less time on facebook because it's not worth my time" Adjust 20 to whatever position your double crux believes to be true, then run a test and iterate. You have to genuinely agree with the premise before running the test. This can work for a number of committed habits which you want to extinguish. (new idea as at the writing of this post)
How to write a dating ad - A suggestion to include information that is easy to ask questions about (this is hard). For example; don't write, "I like camping", write "I like hiking overnight with my dog", giving away details in a way that makes them worth inquiring about. The same reason applies to why writing "I'm a great guy" is really not going to get people to believe you, as opposed to demonstrating the claim. (show, don't tell)
How to give yourself aversions - an investigation into aversive actions and potentially how to avoid collecting them when you have a better understanding of how they happen. (I have not done the research and will need to do that before publishing the post)
How to give someone else an aversion - similar to above, we know we can work differently to other people, and at the intersection of that is a misunderstanding that can leave people uncomfortable.
Lists - Creating lists is a great thing, currently in draft - some considerations about what lists are, what they do, what they are used for, what they can be used for, where they come in handy, and the suggestion that you should use lists more. (also some digital list-keeping solutions)
Choice to remember the details - this stems from choosing to remember names, a point in the conversation where people sometimes tune out. As a mindfulness concept you can choose to remember the details. (short article, not exactly sure why I wanted to write about this)
What is a problem - On the path of problem solving, understanding what a problem is will help you to understand how to attack it. Nothing more complicated than this picture to explain it. The barrier is a problem. This doesn't seem important on it's own but as a foundation for thinking about problems it's good to have sitting around somewhere.
How to/not attend a meetup - for anyone who has never been to a meetup, and anyone who wants the good tips on etiquette for being the new guy in a room of friends. First meetup: shut up and listen, try not to be too much of an impact on the existing meetup group or you might misunderstand the culture.
Noticing the world, Repercussions and taking advantage of them - There are regularly world events that I notice. Things like the olympics, Pokemon go coming out, the (recent) spaceX rocket failure. I try to notice when big events happen and try to think about how to take advantage of the event or the repercussions caused by that event. Motivated to think not only about all the olympians (and the fuss leading up to the olympics), but all the people at home who signed up to a gym because of the publicity of the competitive sport. If only I could get in on the profit of gym signups...
leastgood but only solution I know of - So you know of a solution, but it's rubbish. Or probably is. Also you have no better solutions. Treat this solution as the best solution you have (because it is) and start implementing it, as you do that - keep looking for other solutions. But at least you have a solution to work with!
Self-management thoughts - When you ask yourself, "am I making progress?", "do I want to be in this conversation?" and other self management thoughts. And an investigation into them - it's a CFAR technique but their writing on the topic is brief. (needs research)
instrumental supply-hoarding behaviour - A discussion about the benefits of hoarding supplies for future use. Covering also - what supplies are not a good idea to store, and what supplies are. Maybe this will be useful for people who store things for later days, and hopefully help to consolidate and add some purposefulness to their process.
list of sub groups that I have tried - Before running my local lesswrong group I partook in a great deal of other groups. This was meant as a list with comments on each group.
If you have nothing to do – make better tools for use when real work comes along - This was probably going to be a poetic style motivation post about exactly what the title suggests. Be Prepared.
what other people are good at (as support) - When reaching out for support, some people will be good at things that other people are not. For example - emotional support, time to spend on each other, ideas for solving your problems. Different people might be better or worse than others. Thinking about this can make your strategies towards solving your problems a bit easier to manage. Knowing what works and what does not work, or what you can reliably expect when you reach out for support from some people - is going to supercharge your fulfilment of those needs.
Focusing - An already written guide to Eugine Gendlin's focusing technique. That needs polishing before publishing. The short form: treat your system 1 as a very powerful machine that understands your problems and their solutions more than you do; use your system 2 to ask it questions and see what it returns.
Rewrite: how to become a 1000 year old vampire - I got as far as breaking down this post and got stuck at draft form before rewriting. Might take another stab at it soon.
Should you tell people your goals? - This thread in a post. In summary: It depends on the environment, the wrong environment is actually demotivational, the right environment is extra motivational.
Meta: this took around 4 hours to write up. Which is ridiculously longer than usual. I noticed a substantial number of breaks being taken - not sure if that relates to the difficulty of creating so many summaries or just me today. Still. This experiment might help my future writing focus/direction so I figured I would try it out. If you see an idea of particularly high value I will be happy to try to cover it in more detail.
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Cultivate the desire to X
Recently I have found myself encouraging people to cultivate the desire to X.
Examples that you might want to cultivate interest in include:
- Diet
- Organise ones self
- Plan for the future
- be a goal-oriented thinker
- build the tools
- Anything else in the list of common human goals
- Getting healthy sleep
- Being less wrong
- Trusting people more
- Trusting people less
- exercise
- interest in a topic (cars, fashion, psychology etc.)
Why do we need to cultivate?
We don't. But sometimes we can't just "do". Lot's of reasons are reasonable reasons to not be able to just "do" the thing:
- Some things are scary
- Some things need planning
- Some things need research
- Some things are hard
- Some things are a leap of faith
- Some things can be frustrating to accept
- Some things seem stupid (well if exercising is so great why don't I automatically want to do it)
- Other excuses exist.
On some level you have decided you want to do X; on some other level you have not yet committed to doing it. Easy tasks can get done quickly. More complicated tasks are not so easy to do right away.
Well if it were easy enough to just successfully do the thing - you can go ahead and do the thing (TTYL flying to the moon tomorrow - yea nope.).
- your system 1 wants to do the thing and your system 2 is not sure how.
- your system 2 wants to do the thing and your system 1 is not sure it wants to do the thing.
- The healthy part of you wants to diet; the social part of you is worried about the impact on your social life.
(now borrowing from Common human goals)
- Your desire to live forever wants you to take a medication every morning to increase your longevity; your desire for freedom does not want to be tied down to a bottle of pills every morning.
- Your desire for a legacy wants you to stay late at work; your desire for quality family time wants you to leave the office early.
The solution:
The solution is to cultivate the interest; or the desire to do the thing. From the initial point of interest or desire - you can move forward; do some research to either convince your system 2 of the benefits, or work out how to do the thing to convince your system 1 that it is possible/viable/easy enough. Or maybe after some research the thing seems impossible. I offer Cultivating the desire as a step along the way to working it out.
Short post for today; Cultivate the desire to do X.
Meta: time to write 1.5 hours.
My table of contents contains my other writing
feedback welcome
New year's resolutions: Things worth considering for next year
The beginning of the new year is a natural Schelling Point and swiftly approaching. With that in mind I have created a handy go-to list of things worth considering for next year.
Alongside this process; another thing you might like to do is conduct a review of this year, confirming your progress on major goals; double checking that you are on track. and conduct any last-minute summaries of potential failures or learning-cases.
This list is designed to be used for imagination, opportunity, and potential planning purposes. If you find yourself having the feelings of (disappointment, failure, fear, regret, burdens, guilt and others) reconsider looking at this list and instead do something that will not lead to negative feelings about the future. If you are not getting something positive out of doing this exercise, don't. That's a silly idea. I am banking on the fact that it will be more helpful than not; for most people. If you are in the category of people that it does not help - I am sorry; I assume you know your priorities and are working on them as reasonably effectively as possible - good luck with that task.
This list is going to look a bit like my List of common human goals because it was written concurrenlty with the ideas listed there (and by the same person).
You might want a pen and paper; and 10 minutes to go through this list and consider what things you want to do over the next year that fall into these categories. This time is not for you to plan out an entire year, but something of a chance to consider the playing field of "a year of time". After you have a list of things you want to do; there are lots of things you can do with them. i.e. time planning, research, goal factoring, task-generating.
without further ado; the list:
1. things I might want to study or learn next year
Often people like learning. Are you thinking of higher level study? Or keen to upskill? Thinking of picking up a textbook (our list of best textbooks on every subject) on a topic. Or joining a learning group for a skill
2. life goals I would like to have completed by next year
Do you already have a list of life goals? Should you review them and do you want to particularly work on one over the next year? Is something overdue? Is there something you have been putting off starting?
3. health goals
Are there health targets that you let get away from you this year? Are you looking to set future health targets? Start new habits for the year? beeminder suggests setting actionable goals as beeminding tasks, i.e. "eat carrots today" rather than targets "lose 1kg this month".
4. savings I want to achieve by next year.
Do you want to save money towards something? You need a budget has a free course on getting ahead of the paycheck cycle, pocketbook can also help you manage your money. The best advice seems to be to open a savings account and initiate automatic transactions each week of $n. After several weeks (provided you don't pull money out) you will have accrued several*n dollars of savings. (relevant to people who have a tendency to spend any money in their account at any given time. It's a bit harder to spend money not in your spending-account) In any case; having savings and putting it towards owning a passive income stream is a good goal to have or consider getting in on.
This post may also be of use.
5. job/earning goals
Are you planning to get a new job? Hoping to get a raise? transfer to a new department? work less hours? work more hours? land a few big gigs? While I can't tell you what is worthwhile; it's worth knowing that in the process of interviewing for a new job - you should ask for more pay. for that 5-10 uncomfortable minutes of your life (asking for a raise) you have the potential to earn $5-10 thousand dollars more (or more) for the exact same work.
6. relationship goals + family goals
Married; Kids; Poly; single->not transition; break-up? Divorce? moving away from your parents? Getting better Friends? Thanking your current friends for being so awesome? Doing something different to previously - now is the chance to give it a few minutes thought. There's never a good time to stage a break-up but also living in a bad state of affairs is also not a good thing to prolong. (Disclaimer: before quitting a relationship; first improve communication, if needed contact a professional counsellor)
About families and friends - A lot of people feel like their family holds a stronger bond than their friends by default. For an excellent family that is supportive in your darkest hour that is an excellent situation to be in. However for a burdensome family that drags you down; often it can be hard to get away. In contrast to friends; where good ones can be better than family and bad ones can be walked away from. Specifically what's worth considering is that friends OR family can be a result of how you choose to treat them. in the sense that if you have a preference that your friends be stronger than the strongest family ties then you can carry that into reality and achieve friendships to the envy of most families, and the same goes for a strong supportive family. Your choice of what shape of reality you want to make for yourself will influence (on some levels) what sort of mess you get yourself into, and what sort of support network you have around. Make that consideration over the next year of what sort of friendships and families you want to make for yourself and keep for yourself.
7. lifestyle goals
Start exercising daily (do you even lift)? Quitting smoking? Do you go clubbing too often? maybe you want to get out more? Addicted to curry puffs? Hate hanging out with that group of friends? Don't like going to pub trivia but do it anyway? Too many doughnuts? Go hiking? Thinking of trying out a new hobby? holding out for "the right time". take that leap, sign up for a class. Now is the time to make lifestyle changes. (fair warning: most new year's resolutions fail, look into SMART goals)
8. holiday goals/ travelling goals
looking at doing a month-long holiday? Visiting someone in another place? Maybe consider planning from now. Studies have shown that anticipation and putting energy towards planning positive things leads to happiness (in the journey) the ability to look forward to your next holiday is going to have positive impacts on the way you live.
9. donations
Have you had intention to make donations but haven't made the plunge? Maybe put some thought into how much you might like to donate and when/where to? Many LW'ers are also EA's and have interests in motivated and purposeful giving for maximising possible outcomes. This could be an opportunity to join the group of EA's that are actively giving.
10. volunteering
Have you always wanted to volunteer but never looked into it? Maybe next year is the year to try. Put some research in and find a group in need of volunteers. Volunteering has the potential to give you a lot of positive feelings as well as a sense of community; being part of something bigger, and more.
You could stop here but there are a few more. Out of the more general List of common human goals comes the following list of other areas to consider. They are shorter in description and left open to imagination than those above.
11. Revenge
Is next year your chance to exact revenge on your foes?
12. Virtual reality success
Is next year the chance to harvest your gemstones?
13. Addiction
Is next year the year to get addicted (to something healthy or good for you, like exercise), or un-addicted (to something unhealthy for you)?
14. Ambassador
Are there things you want to do next year which will leave you as a representative of a group? Is there a way to push that forward? Or better prepare for that event?
15. Help others?
Do you know how you might go about helping others next year?
16. Keeping up with the joneses
Are you competing with anyone? Is there something you are likely to need to prepare for throught the year?
17. Feedback
Are you looking for feedback from others? Are you looking to give feedback to others? Is this the year for new feedback?
18. Influence
Do you want to influence the public?
19. fame
Do you want to achieve some level of fame? We live in a realm of the internet! You wouldn't believe how easy that is these days...
20. being part of something greater
Joining a movement? Helping to create a revolution? This could be the year...
21. Improve the tools available
As scientists we stand on the shoulders of the knowledge before us in order to grow. We need sharp tools to make accurate cuts and finely tuned instruments to make exact measurements. Can you help the world by pushing that requirement forward?
22. create something new
Is there something new that you want to do; is next year appropriate for doing it?
23. Break a record
Have your eye on a record? How are you going to make it happen?
24. free yourself of your shackles
Are there things holding you back or tying you down? Can you release those burdens?
25. experience
hoping to have a new experience, can you make it happen with thinking about it in advance?
26. Art
Want to have developed a creation? Can you put wheels into motion?
27. Spirituality
Anything from a religion based spiritual appreciation to a general appreciation of the universe. Revel in the "merely real" of our universe.
28. community
Looking to make a community, looking to be part of an existing community. Looking to start a lesswrong branch? Do it!
Meta:
about 2.5 hours of writing plus feedback from the https://complice.co/room/lesswrong room and the Slack channel
If you are looking for some common ways to work on these possible goals? That sounds like a great title for the next post in a matching series (one I have not written yet). If you want to be a munchkin and start compiling thoughts on the idea, feel free to send me a message with a link to a google doc, otherwise you might have to wait. This post was written out of necessity for the new-year, and wasn't on my to-do list so the next one might take time to create.
Feel free to comment on goals; plans; progress or post your plans for the next year below.
If you can see improvements to this post - don't be afraid to mention them!
To see more posts I have written see my Table of contents
Fractals and time management
As you might know, fractal structures appear in a variety of natural situations and have found many technical applications (see Wikipedia for more information and examples). In this short article I want to ask the question, whether it makes sense to structure various activities according to a 'fractal timetable'?
Cleaning rota
When you have to clean a flat or a house you probably you have seen a list like this before. There are some tasks that one needs to do every day, others come along only once a week or once a month. Aside from those main cleaning tasks, there will be many small things you do several times during a day, like throwing something into the trash bin or washing your hands.
If you analyse the structure of this behaviour, you will find that it looks similar to a one dimensional fractal (compare with the various layers in the construction of the Cantor set, for example).
School Timetables
Most schools that I am familiar with use periodic arrangements for the teaching. You have a weekly timetable and at the same time every week you have the same subject for a whole year. This makes sense from the point of view of teacher and room allocation, but is this the best structure for optimal learning?
My own experience suggests that the quality of my memory strongly depends on my understanding. If I take the time to understand everything, I will remember those things for years and can even reconstruct lost knowledge by using intuition and logical deduction. If I learned something poorly, on the other hand, I sometimes forget it completely in a matter of hours.
Understanding is usually gained by a deep involvement with the topic for a longer period of time. I also find it much easier to learn something if I can focus on it for a certain period of time and examine the object/concept in detail without being disturbed by other matters.
What if the best way of teaching school mathematics (for example) would be to have a 3 week long intense workshop once a year with some other 10 one day sessions allocated once a month and small homework problems evenly distributed throughout the year? The same could be done with the other subjects to fill the full school year.
Other Areas
Our motivation, health and available time fluctuate widely, but most jobs require a periodic commitment. This might be OK for mechanical jobs, but for professions with a substantial amount of creativity and cognitive demand one certainly can do better by playing around with the time/work distribution. (Here is an interesting TED talk about a 'year off'.)
Similar problems/opportunities arise in fitness, personal development and relationships.
Questions
I don't know, whether there are any existing studies on this topic. A superficial Google search didn't reveal anything interesting. I also would like to know, whether you had similar or contradictory experiences? Maybe I am an exception when it comes to this type of learning.
Do you think that adding the mathematical model of a 'fractal' makes this approach more intuitive/useful or whether 'flexible time management' captures enough of the structure of the problem?
Thanks!
Private Manned Moonbase in the 1990s, Yet Another Planning Fallacy
Back in the 1990s I came across a site describing a plan for returning to the moon via privately funded enterprise. They presented a Reference Mission, a timeline (raise some money now, design the hardware, build the hardware, hire a launch vehicle, get to the moon, sell the movie rights) which had them starting to build hardware in a few years and touching down on the moon only a few years later. I even met one of the enthusiasts.
What I found interesting at the time was a presentation of the "Frequently Raised Objections" and their counter arguments. Their viewpoint was "we've got this completely solved--we're going!" The primary issue seemed to be raising the money, and this was covered by a business plan at least to some degree of detail. Of particular relevance was "It's all on paper, nothing is real". Wow, take that Mr Frequently Raised Objection.
Most of their points looked fairly reasonable in isolation, but of course the idea has failed completely. No launch, no hardware, and very little money. High confidence in the business plan despite little supporting evidence seems to have been the major problem.
I can't help thinking of these guys every now and then, with their nifty ideas like ascending from the moon with the astronaut sitting on a rocket motor in his spacesuit with no spacecraft needed. I guess the detail made the Planning Fallacy seem less likely at the time.
The parallels with some other ventures are striking.
Video: Getting Things Done Author at DO Lectures
If nothing else, this is a distillation of him spending a lot of time analyzing how people ineffectively manage their time.
Link:
http://www.dolectures.com/speakers/speakers-2010/david-allen
I expect to watch this two more times.
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