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Recognizing the increasing marginal utility of work is exactly what allows you to live your life well. IF you take advantage of it correctly. Imagine you are s

Recognizing the increasing marginal utility of work is exactly what allows you to live your life well. IF you take advantage of it correctly. Imagine you are stuck in a room with 10 screaming people. You could expend a bunch of effort and get one of the people to stop screaming, but this hardly seems worth the effort. There will still be 9 people screaming, and now you will be too exhausted to work on your own projects. Instead you devote a little effort to learning how to deal with the screaming while you get your work done. THIS IS A MISTAKE. It is a mistake because getting that person to stop screaming is a permanent improvement upon your situation. Getting the first person to stop screaming has very little utility, but the next one is easier AND makes an even bigger difference. The next one even more so, etc. By the time you get down to only 2 or 3 screaming people you are amazed at all the new things you can hear. You can almost hear yourself think! When you work on things that give yourself more capability you are making permanent stackable improvements. By the time I had fixed the loudest screaming voices of nutrition, sleep, exercise, and constructively reacting to stress, I couldn't even recognize the person I used to be.

tomohawk 12y ago
Absolutely! Other screaming voices: learning which meetings you can skip (and how frequently), learning which emails you can ignore, learning what can be dropped without too much consequence, learning which 'emergency' requests can be deferred (as they will probably be overcome by events anyway), effectively delegating instead of micromanaging. Basically, learn to stop sweating the small stuff.
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  One of my favorites: when "mandatory" actually is, and when it isn't.
  - dclusin 12y ago
    Don't forget about its evil twin, three different people with equivalent rank coming to you with three different things and having all of them say this the highest priority issue you should be working on.
mooreds 12y ago
I love the analogy, but I'm not sure how this is applicable to the author of this post. What are the screaming people he can silence?
- chubot 12y ago
  prepare and conduct my teaching, supervise my masters students, do my administrative duties (including answering lots of mails), review papers for some conferences and devote the minimum acceptable time to supervising my PhD students. I imagine there are some ways to become more efficient at these things -- especially e-mail. The way he writes it sounds as if these are fixed burdens. You can get creative with them.
ido 12y ago
constructively reacting to stress Can you expand on that point?
- stronglikedan 12y ago
  I interpret that as constructively figuring out ways to mitigate the stress point, instead of trying to ignore it or running from it, which is destructive, because it doesn't reduce or remove it.
- jpollock 12y ago
  First, realizing that your reactions (usually an expression of anger) are resulting from stress and not from the behaviour of the other person. Second, inserting a pause between your immediate reaction and your response allowing yourself time to moderate and change it. Finally, recognizing that your reaction is an indicator of stress and then doing whatever it is that makes you less stressed. Exercise, vacation, reading, etc.
- jacobolus 12y ago
  Small children (and many adults; and to some extent everyone) overreact when they get stressed: they become angry, self-centered, and incapable of measured logical thinking; they interpret incidental or minor problems as calamities; they lose sight of context and feel insulted by normally harmless comments; they ascribe their stress to totally unrelated causes. When multiple people are involved, and more than one is stressed, you get horrible miscommunication, and shouting matches where both people are convinced that the other one is a jerk. As people grow up, they can learn to control their emotional response, or at least learn non-destructive coping mechanisms. (For instance, leaving an argument alone until both parties have calmed down enough to think about what’s really at stake in the argument and what’s important and come up with solutions that both can agree to.) They can learn the true causes of their stress, and try to fix those, instead of blaming unrelated people or events.
  - bostonpete 12y ago
    This is the most well-expressed comment I've read in a while.
networked 12y ago
Nice analogy! I think this essay is very relevant here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/58g/levels_of_action/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/58g/levels_of_action/. It explores the concept of there being multiple levels of stackable improvements.
kelukelugames 12y ago
"constructively reacting to stress" How did you manage to do this?

tomohawk 12y ago

Absolutely! Other screaming voices: learning which meetings you can skip (and how frequently), learning which emails you can ignore, learning what can be dropped without too much consequence, learning which 'emergency' requests can be deferred (as they will probably be overcome by events anyway), effectively delegating instead of micromanaging. Basically, learn to stop sweating the small stuff.

jamesaguilar 12y ago
One of my favorites: when "mandatory" actually is, and when it isn't.
- dclusin 12y ago
  Don't forget about its evil twin, three different people with equivalent rank coming to you with three different things and having all of them say this the highest priority issue you should be working on.

mooreds 12y ago

I love the analogy, but I'm not sure how this is applicable to the author of this post. What are the screaming people he can silence?

chubot 12y ago
prepare and conduct my teaching, supervise my masters students, do my administrative duties (including answering lots of mails), review papers for some conferences and devote the minimum acceptable time to supervising my PhD students. I imagine there are some ways to become more efficient at these things -- especially e-mail. The way he writes it sounds as if these are fixed burdens. You can get creative with them.

ido 12y ago

constructively reacting to stress Can you expand on that point?

stronglikedan 12y ago
I interpret that as constructively figuring out ways to mitigate the stress point, instead of trying to ignore it or running from it, which is destructive, because it doesn't reduce or remove it.
jpollock 12y ago
First, realizing that your reactions (usually an expression of anger) are resulting from stress and not from the behaviour of the other person. Second, inserting a pause between your immediate reaction and your response allowing yourself time to moderate and change it. Finally, recognizing that your reaction is an indicator of stress and then doing whatever it is that makes you less stressed. Exercise, vacation, reading, etc.
jacobolus 12y ago
Small children (and many adults; and to some extent everyone) overreact when they get stressed: they become angry, self-centered, and incapable of measured logical thinking; they interpret incidental or minor problems as calamities; they lose sight of context and feel insulted by normally harmless comments; they ascribe their stress to totally unrelated causes. When multiple people are involved, and more than one is stressed, you get horrible miscommunication, and shouting matches where both people are convinced that the other one is a jerk. As people grow up, they can learn to control their emotional response, or at least learn non-destructive coping mechanisms. (For instance, leaving an argument alone until both parties have calmed down enough to think about what’s really at stake in the argument and what’s important and come up with solutions that both can agree to.) They can learn the true causes of their stress, and try to fix those, instead of blaming unrelated people or events.
- bostonpete 12y ago
  This is the most well-expressed comment I've read in a while.

networked 12y ago

Nice analogy! I think this essay is very relevant here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/58g/levels_of_action/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/58g/levels_of_action/. It explores the concept of there being multiple levels of stackable improvements.

kelukelugames 12y ago

"constructively reacting to stress" How did you manage to do this?