17 ms·

The world is full of wasted motion

122 points by stanislavb 6y ago

atian 6y ago
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.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  "part of an energy game for you to expend more" "you can probably do way with this without any lasting neurotoxicity" I really don't understand what you're trying to say here.
  - atian 6y ago
    Hey apologies! I was trying to say a few things jumbled in a few sentences: 1. A lot of what the author suggests to do takes additional energy, and energy is not free. We can either spend more time or amp up our heads so that our attention/processing is a bit better (possibly also compensatory against sleep deprivation for additional time). 2. For the latter, we can probably sustain this behavior for quite a while without adverse effects. It is a light suggestion that doing with what the author suggests in the fashion of stimulants is humanly possible.
woliveirajr 6y ago
> 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.
- eloff 6y ago
  And a corollary to that: it's better to make a decision and start moving, even if it's the wrong decision than to do nothing. Just make sure you reevaluate if it's still the right decision and have the ability to change course (iterate). I've heard both Jeff Bezos and Tom Bilyeu espouse this. If the decision is irrevocable (e.g. getting married), then obviously more care is warranted and doing nothing might be better until you're more certain.
  - goldenchrome 6y ago
    I agree but I'd go even further and say that even something like marriage is quite easily reversible. It depends on your risk tolerance of course.
    - nibsfive 6y ago
      Kids are irreversible, marriage is highly reversible.
      - eloff 6y ago
        Kids, yeah, definitely irreversible. Marriage - I don't think it's highly reversible, see my sibling comment.
    - klyrs 6y ago
      In some ways, it is. For somebody who changed their name, it's tons of paperwork, at least, to undo that. If they've published papers in the meantime, that name change likely cannot be fully undone. Depending on finances, there may be years of alimony involved. As others note, if children resulted from the marriage, there's no undo. People save money on auto insurance while married, and often, "divorced" is more expensive than "single". If the divorce is amicable, it may be easy to execute -- if not, thousands of dollars and perhaps years of legal battles will be involved. Depends what you call "easy", I guess
    - eloff 6y ago
      Marriage is not that easily reversible. You lose 50% of your assets in the process (+legal fees, alimony, and maybe child support - can be more like 70% with ongoing costs), have to deal with all of the fallout and stigma in your family and social circles. That's not saying you can't course correct - but the cost is very high compared to most things.
Animats 6y ago
"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 "
- hawktheslayer 6y ago
  If like me you don't know what therbligs meant, it's a list of 18 motions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therblig#:~:text=Therbligs%20are%2018%20kinds%20of,labour%20by%20eliminating%20unneeded%20movements https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therblig#:~:text=Therbligs%2....
SignalNotSecure 6y ago
The purpose of life is to convert energy into motion
- danvayn 6y ago
  Yeah, but uh, what about heat death?
  - beckingz 6y ago
    the sooner the better
  - _carbyau_ 6y ago
    The end of the universe? We've got time. :-P I like this response as with a true heat death of the universe nothing can move, so does time even exist at that point? Alternately, heat death = where you fall asleep with the electric blanket on, wake up dehydrated and lacking all energy...
    - jodrellblank 6y ago
      Roger Penrose's answer to that is that there is nothing to experience time, and with no time there is no way to measure speed and no concept of frequency and so no concept of distance. Without all that, the enormouse heat-death decayed universe still contains all the energy it ever did (because it can't be destroyed), and if there's no distance then the heat-death universe is identical to the pre-big-bang universe, and so there is no need for a big crunch and it can still be a cyclic thing where it explodes again, leaving the cosmic microwave background radiation as a remnant of the boundary between the previous aeon and the current one.
- atian 6y ago
  We have progressed to produce value. Not all motion is valuable.
- AshWolfy 6y ago
  Why?
aidenn0 6y ago
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).
stanislavb 6y ago
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 :)?
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  Luck of the draw.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  I get that it might feel a little unfair but it's probably just bad luck/timing. My sincere advice for your own sake: don't worry about it, content aggregation rankings are fickle. Try not to get invested in those capricious judgements. If I may speculate a bit: HN has a different ranking algorithm to reddit, but I suspect they both share similarities in the way they are influenced by early upvotes which build momentum towards a top ranking. If your post was unlucky and missed a bunch of people who would have been interested at the time, then it'll probably fade away.
  - stanislavb 6y ago
    No, I think I didn't explain the situation clearly. The post is still submitted by my user. It's not like someone else posted in a different moment etc. I'm pretty much aware about the luck/timing factor. It's more like, there's is some hidden functionality I'm not aware of or there is a moderator what manually bumped the popularity of the post and changed the post date ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ p.s. I don't get the downvoting of my comment. Could someone shed some light on that too :D?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - rolleiflex 6y ago
      Yes, IIRC dang mentioned once that a 'second chance' feature exists where a mod can give it a second shot if they decide it's interesting. I think it's essentially discretionary and it doesn't edit the votes, it just makes the submit 'new' again, like resetting the clock, so the submission has another shot. I suspect you were getting downvotes for your first comment because it sounds like you're complaining about submitting the same thing and not getting traction, and then somebody else's submission getting it later on.
voidhorse 6y ago
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.
- donw 6y ago
  I came here, apparently, to agree with you strongly. The ceiling in my house is, upstairs, roughly one meter above my head. Downstairs, I've got maybe two? That is "wasted space". It takes more energy to heat, and uses more building materials. Efficiency dictates that I do not need that extra airspace above my noggin, and thus it should not exist. But it feels better. When I lived in Berlin, the doors and ceilings felt as if they were built for a race of giants -- much taller, and much wider, then they needed to be. And it was wonderful. It took some getting used to, but I could feel the difference. Japan is full of inefficiency. There are people, human beings in pressed shirts and white gloves, that manually clear trains for departure on crowded platforms. Even when things aren't crowded, there is almost always a person on every train platform in Tokyo. And that feels better, too. Yes, the automated systems -- which exist! -- probably do more for safety. But I really like knowing that I can scream out for help, and another human being has a job description that involves "hear me" and "send aid." Because I'm an engineer, and I know full well how often we miss edge cases. And, yes, this is less efficient. And my ticket might be a little cheaper if we had robots doing all the work. But those people do an important job. I am glad they are there, doing that job. I really don't want to those jobs "efficiented" away by a bunch of management experts who are chauffeured about in cars with tinted windows, and never ride the trains anyway. Games are inefficient. But they make us happy. Love is inefficient. One could make he argument that it would be better for society if computers assigned relationships based genetic/personality/economic/whatever criteria. But I don't think any of us want that, either. Gattica was a dystopia. I'm not sure how, but we need to capture the idea that human happiness requires that every system have, built-in, a certain amount of inefficiency.
sudosteph 6y ago
> 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 http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html --
trabant00 6y ago
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.
- neelnanda 6y ago
  Hey! Author of the piece here. I somewhat disagree, I think experiments are a great way to overcome wasted motion. Sure, only 20% will succeed. But there's a major asymmetry with trying new things - you can drop the failures after trying it once, but can keep doing the successes again and again. For example, if I want to find a new hobby, I should try lots of things. 80% will be boring and I can drop it after one session, but 20% could be incredibly fun, and worth doing for the rest of my life. I flesh this point out in this post: https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/33-upside-risk https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/33-upside-risk
  - trabant00 6y ago
    If you dedicate all your time to the 20% you found - at one time in some context - to be fun it means you don't have any more time for experimenting. And the world changes and your data is no longer relevant. There is no escaping the trial and error loop. If you could then science for example would go uninterrupted from one success to another. Or organizations would achieve 100% efficiency after some experimenting. You can see in history people, organizations, societies, etc that have tried to stick to what they found efficient at some point. But that led to rigidity and gradual loss of touch with the evolving reality, the exact opposite of what was desired.
ilaksh 6y ago
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.
throw_v0zOzJsEh 6y ago
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.
- sudosteph 6y ago
  I do see the appeal of this sort of in-the-moment mindfulness - especially for people who are burnt out or don't otherwise get the dedicated rest time they need from the world. But this reads as awfully sad to me. I hope you're doing OK. I had a a pretty long period of time where I consigned myself to rubber-banding between relentless, meaningless, profitable, and phoned-in productivity vs total solipsism under the guise of "self-care". I told myself things like this comment back then. I thought if I could savor and find meaning in the little things, then I could learn to accept the fact that I had sacrificed most of my agency as a human being in the quest for career progress and the appearance of success. It was really, really not healthy in the long-run, and I don't ever want to be stuck in my head like that again. I'm fairly certain that I really am what I do and what I've done - and that's OK. I don't think I could tolerate existence otherwise. I still waste plenty of time (and recommend choosing to do so ), but I'm now more conscientious about whether the time I waste is manifesting into something physically observable at the very least. It's easier to keep the habit alive than it is to build it back once you've lost it.
scottmcdot 6y ago
Is it fair to say that the author would want us to read the first 20% of this post?
tinco 6y ago
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.
cccc4all 6y ago
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.
- neelnanda 6y ago
  Interesting! Can you say a bit more about what you don't like about the font style, layout and color scheme?
  - cccc4all 6y ago
    Please download and use a standard theme pack for blogs, paid ones are usually better. If you know visual designer, discuss the contrast aspects of your site design.
hehehaha 6y ago
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.
yowlingcat 6y ago
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.

122 points by stanislavb 6y ago

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.

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
"part of an energy game for you to expend more" "you can probably do way with this without any lasting neurotoxicity" I really don't understand what you're trying to say here.
- atian 6y ago
  Hey apologies! I was trying to say a few things jumbled in a few sentences: 1. A lot of what the author suggests to do takes additional energy, and energy is not free. We can either spend more time or amp up our heads so that our attention/processing is a bit better (possibly also compensatory against sleep deprivation for additional time). 2. For the latter, we can probably sustain this behavior for quite a while without adverse effects. It is a light suggestion that doing with what the author suggests in the fashion of stimulants is humanly possible.

woliveirajr 6y ago

> 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.

eloff 6y ago
And a corollary to that: it's better to make a decision and start moving, even if it's the wrong decision than to do nothing. Just make sure you reevaluate if it's still the right decision and have the ability to change course (iterate). I've heard both Jeff Bezos and Tom Bilyeu espouse this. If the decision is irrevocable (e.g. getting married), then obviously more care is warranted and doing nothing might be better until you're more certain.
- goldenchrome 6y ago
  I agree but I'd go even further and say that even something like marriage is quite easily reversible. It depends on your risk tolerance of course.
  - nibsfive 6y ago
    Kids are irreversible, marriage is highly reversible.
    - eloff 6y ago
      Kids, yeah, definitely irreversible. Marriage - I don't think it's highly reversible, see my sibling comment.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    In some ways, it is. For somebody who changed their name, it's tons of paperwork, at least, to undo that. If they've published papers in the meantime, that name change likely cannot be fully undone. Depending on finances, there may be years of alimony involved. As others note, if children resulted from the marriage, there's no undo. People save money on auto insurance while married, and often, "divorced" is more expensive than "single". If the divorce is amicable, it may be easy to execute -- if not, thousands of dollars and perhaps years of legal battles will be involved. Depends what you call "easy", I guess
  - eloff 6y ago
    Marriage is not that easily reversible. You lose 50% of your assets in the process (+legal fees, alimony, and maybe child support - can be more like 70% with ongoing costs), have to deal with all of the fallout and stigma in your family and social circles. That's not saying you can't course correct - but the cost is very high compared to most things.

Animats 6y ago

"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 "

hawktheslayer 6y ago
If like me you don't know what therbligs meant, it's a list of 18 motions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therblig#:~:text=Therbligs%20are%2018%20kinds%20of,labour%20by%20eliminating%20unneeded%20movements https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therblig#:~:text=Therbligs%2....

SignalNotSecure 6y ago

The purpose of life is to convert energy into motion

danvayn 6y ago
Yeah, but uh, what about heat death?
- beckingz 6y ago
  the sooner the better
- _carbyau_ 6y ago
  The end of the universe? We've got time. :-P I like this response as with a true heat death of the universe nothing can move, so does time even exist at that point? Alternately, heat death = where you fall asleep with the electric blanket on, wake up dehydrated and lacking all energy...
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    Roger Penrose's answer to that is that there is nothing to experience time, and with no time there is no way to measure speed and no concept of frequency and so no concept of distance. Without all that, the enormouse heat-death decayed universe still contains all the energy it ever did (because it can't be destroyed), and if there's no distance then the heat-death universe is identical to the pre-big-bang universe, and so there is no need for a big crunch and it can still be a cyclic thing where it explodes again, leaving the cosmic microwave background radiation as a remnant of the boundary between the previous aeon and the current one.
atian 6y ago
We have progressed to produce value. Not all motion is valuable.
AshWolfy 6y ago
Why?

aidenn0 6y ago

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).

stanislavb 6y ago

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 :)?

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
Luck of the draw.
themacguffinman 6y ago
I get that it might feel a little unfair but it's probably just bad luck/timing. My sincere advice for your own sake: don't worry about it, content aggregation rankings are fickle. Try not to get invested in those capricious judgements. If I may speculate a bit: HN has a different ranking algorithm to reddit, but I suspect they both share similarities in the way they are influenced by early upvotes which build momentum towards a top ranking. If your post was unlucky and missed a bunch of people who would have been interested at the time, then it'll probably fade away.
- stanislavb 6y ago
  No, I think I didn't explain the situation clearly. The post is still submitted by my user. It's not like someone else posted in a different moment etc. I'm pretty much aware about the luck/timing factor. It's more like, there's is some hidden functionality I'm not aware of or there is a moderator what manually bumped the popularity of the post and changed the post date ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ p.s. I don't get the downvoting of my comment. Could someone shed some light on that too :D?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - rolleiflex 6y ago
    Yes, IIRC dang mentioned once that a 'second chance' feature exists where a mod can give it a second shot if they decide it's interesting. I think it's essentially discretionary and it doesn't edit the votes, it just makes the submit 'new' again, like resetting the clock, so the submission has another shot. I suspect you were getting downvotes for your first comment because it sounds like you're complaining about submitting the same thing and not getting traction, and then somebody else's submission getting it later on.

voidhorse 6y ago

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.

donw 6y ago
I came here, apparently, to agree with you strongly. The ceiling in my house is, upstairs, roughly one meter above my head. Downstairs, I've got maybe two? That is "wasted space". It takes more energy to heat, and uses more building materials. Efficiency dictates that I do not need that extra airspace above my noggin, and thus it should not exist. But it feels better. When I lived in Berlin, the doors and ceilings felt as if they were built for a race of giants -- much taller, and much wider, then they needed to be. And it was wonderful. It took some getting used to, but I could feel the difference. Japan is full of inefficiency. There are people, human beings in pressed shirts and white gloves, that manually clear trains for departure on crowded platforms. Even when things aren't crowded, there is almost always a person on every train platform in Tokyo. And that feels better, too. Yes, the automated systems -- which exist! -- probably do more for safety. But I really like knowing that I can scream out for help, and another human being has a job description that involves "hear me" and "send aid." Because I'm an engineer, and I know full well how often we miss edge cases. And, yes, this is less efficient. And my ticket might be a little cheaper if we had robots doing all the work. But those people do an important job. I am glad they are there, doing that job. I really don't want to those jobs "efficiented" away by a bunch of management experts who are chauffeured about in cars with tinted windows, and never ride the trains anyway. Games are inefficient. But they make us happy. Love is inefficient. One could make he argument that it would be better for society if computers assigned relationships based genetic/personality/economic/whatever criteria. But I don't think any of us want that, either. Gattica was a dystopia. I'm not sure how, but we need to capture the idea that human happiness requires that every system have, built-in, a certain amount of inefficiency.

sudosteph 6y ago

> 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 http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html --

trabant00 6y ago

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.

neelnanda 6y ago
Hey! Author of the piece here. I somewhat disagree, I think experiments are a great way to overcome wasted motion. Sure, only 20% will succeed. But there's a major asymmetry with trying new things - you can drop the failures after trying it once, but can keep doing the successes again and again. For example, if I want to find a new hobby, I should try lots of things. 80% will be boring and I can drop it after one session, but 20% could be incredibly fun, and worth doing for the rest of my life. I flesh this point out in this post: https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/33-upside-risk https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/33-upside-risk
- trabant00 6y ago
  If you dedicate all your time to the 20% you found - at one time in some context - to be fun it means you don't have any more time for experimenting. And the world changes and your data is no longer relevant. There is no escaping the trial and error loop. If you could then science for example would go uninterrupted from one success to another. Or organizations would achieve 100% efficiency after some experimenting. You can see in history people, organizations, societies, etc that have tried to stick to what they found efficient at some point. But that led to rigidity and gradual loss of touch with the evolving reality, the exact opposite of what was desired.

ilaksh 6y ago

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.

throw_v0zOzJsEh 6y ago

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.

sudosteph 6y ago
I do see the appeal of this sort of in-the-moment mindfulness - especially for people who are burnt out or don't otherwise get the dedicated rest time they need from the world. But this reads as awfully sad to me. I hope you're doing OK. I had a a pretty long period of time where I consigned myself to rubber-banding between relentless, meaningless, profitable, and phoned-in productivity vs total solipsism under the guise of "self-care". I told myself things like this comment back then. I thought if I could savor and find meaning in the little things, then I could learn to accept the fact that I had sacrificed most of my agency as a human being in the quest for career progress and the appearance of success. It was really, really not healthy in the long-run, and I don't ever want to be stuck in my head like that again. I'm fairly certain that I really am what I do and what I've done - and that's OK. I don't think I could tolerate existence otherwise. I still waste plenty of time (and recommend choosing to do so ), but I'm now more conscientious about whether the time I waste is manifesting into something physically observable at the very least. It's easier to keep the habit alive than it is to build it back once you've lost it.

scottmcdot 6y ago

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

tinco 6y ago

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.

cccc4all 6y ago

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.

neelnanda 6y ago
Interesting! Can you say a bit more about what you don't like about the font style, layout and color scheme?
- cccc4all 6y ago
  Please download and use a standard theme pack for blogs, paid ones are usually better. If you know visual designer, discuss the contrast aspects of your site design.

hehehaha 6y ago

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.

yowlingcat 6y ago

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.