Yields and Flows

[IlliniDave]

Will note that complexity is not an issue when the system is in place. See e.g. walking: easy for humans age 1 and up. Hard for a robot.
The hard thing about complexity is building it or rebuilding it insofar it can't be copied from others.

Yeah, I was thinking about that on the way home from work (happened to be thinking about cooking rather than walking), though It seems to me we're all limited by native aptitude. To extend the analogy of physical activities, playing a guitar is a system of very simple individual movements but a lot of people are very limited in how far they can go with it, even some who spend a lot of time working on it. It's complex but not all that complicated for a human mind.

Redundancy is good but it has a cost, and that's a lot of what I'm weighing. Once I check out I'll probably have about 25 years left, give or take, and some fraction of those will come with decreased physical capacity. I look at my brainstorming lists of all the activity/skills I thought interesting and/or worthwhile to pursue and realize with the constraint of finite time, breadth will come at the expense of depth, and vice-versa. In other words, do I want to be a generalist to whatever extent I can, or put all my energy into the subset that interest me the most?

Sitting here today I'm inclined to favor the latter (five years ago I would have said the former), which has me rethinking what's the best way to weave money into the equation. Age and relative availability of money are factors in how that thinking has evolved. Renaissance Man versus Man of Productive Leisure is maybe the distinction I'm trying to make.

The hazards of showing up to ERE ~2/3 of the way through life already.

[7Wannabe5]

I look at my brainstorming lists of all the activity/skills I thought interesting and/or worthwhile to pursue and realize with the constraint of finite time, breadth will come at the expense of depth, and vice-versa. In other words, do I want to be a generalist to whatever extent I can, or put all my energy into the subset that interest me the most?

Sitting here today I'm inclined to favor the latter (five years ago I would have said the former), which has me rethinking what's the best way to weave money into the equation. Age and relative availability of money are factors in how that thinking has evolved. Renaissance Man versus Man of Productive Leisure is maybe the distinction I'm trying to make.

Interesting, because we are the same age, and I have recently come around to the same, yet opposite, perspective. Instead of continuing to attempt to strait-jacket myself into focusing on just 1 or 2 or 5 objectives/projects/interest towards mega-mastery, I am giving myself free rein to attempt as many micro-masteries as I like while rationally acknowledging that 500 X 100 hours is about all that I've got left in me.

[IlliniDave]

It's definitely something we all should tailor to ourselves. Right now I don't even think of it as gaining mastery or accomplishments, although some of that may occur. I also see it as a freedom thing: rather than running myself ragged trying to keep too many irons in the fire, or feeling frustrated because I keep falling behind the schedule required for an overly ambitious to-do list, I'm trying to determine what is important and freeing myself to pursue those things to my heart's content. Also, as I hatch plans I'm trying to limit myself to only looking a few years ahead at a time. As things unfold it's likely that new interests will catch my attention, while some of the "old" ones will run their course and fade. I make it an annual exercise to take some time during the year end holidays to contemplate such things, and expect more than one or two changes in course along the way.

[7Wannabe5]

@IlliniDave:

I think we are at similar juncture in the "all roads lead to Dublin" sense. I was trying to stretch myself to something like 7 year SMART goals, and have now realized that led to more sunk cost loss than gain through focused efficiency. For simple instance, I did not anticipate that my DD24 would have purchased her own little house and garden by the time she became my DD28, and therefore that it would be more likely that many aspects of the "cottage" portion of my ideal lifestyle, the Adventure (Ne) Cottage (Fe, Si) Library (Ti), would take place there with myself as mobile human rather than vice-versa. IOW, I did not anticipate such a swift role progression from one who roasts the turkey to one who arrives early to help bake the pies.

OTOH, it's much more relaxing, and ultimately productive, for me to have the freedom to flit from project to project, especially since they often do end up blending together eventually. For example, Taleb's program towards erudition which is something like have a lot of very good books at hand, read one until you get stuck or bored, switch to another book, do this for 30 hours/week, instantly appealed to me, and has worked very well* for me when I have the luxury of that many hours with no need to work or humor other humans who are bothering me. So, I am now applying the same protocol to my projects, some of which are "just" reading.

* I actually found that I could readily digest increasingly dense works by this approach, because I was free to intersperse with light reading. For instance, it is easier for me to read a book on the topic of Surreal Numbers while I also have a history of panics in the stock market, and a novel about a middle-aged woman moving to Italy and having a torrid affair with her young gardener at hand.

[Jin+Guice]

@Redbird:
Thanks for starting this thread, it would've been hard for me to start a thread this beneficial to me, no matter how hard I was trying . I just reread the whole thread and it's very helpful for where I'm at right now.


I thought about making this post a journal post, but I think it belongs here.

The examples were really helpful to me. The examples helped me see the map. A journey isn't made by looking at a map, but having a map makes the journey (and perhaps even choosing a destination) easier.

It's clear to me that I need to shift my conscious efforts from level 5 optimizing for money towards level 6. If I was going to sharpen my mind through emergency, I'd quit my current job, but I'm not feeling that daring yet.

Helpfully, my ideas about semi-ERE are (I think) level 6 ideas, but I was viewing them through level 5 eyes.

A personal challenge for me will be figuring out how music fits into my web of goals. I spend A LOT of time doing different music bullshit and I'm not sure my yield is high enough to continue doing this. I have some bad habits and ego attachment from my former life to contend with in this realm. I need level 6 thinking to deal with this problem because money has never been the only goal, but without a solitary easily measurable goal, what to optimize for?

Something that's occurred to me through thinking about this is that leveling up at higher levels may cause one to spend more money. @c_L demonstrated this in his example about changing cellphone plans. The caveat here is that, in most cases, it wouldn't be a lot more money and if you don't understand why, it's probably a good idea to keep focusing on spending less money. Maybe this is also a reason why sub-Jacob level spending is rare. If one devotes their life to optimizing for the lowest expenditures it's possible to beat Jacob, but in following the thinking to get there, one realizes that this is pointless.

I like the breaking down of the Wheaton Scale further into different ways of thinking with moats around them. I can see that going from 5-6 does require a change in thinking. Personally I started between 4-5 and I now feel that I'm between 5-6 so I haven't had to cross a moat yet. I think levels 6+ are what separates ERE from the rest of FIRE.

I think that starting Wheaton Level also has some impact on the journey. I started between 4-5. I'm not really sure I can say I've progressed a full level yet, much less crossed a moat.

I agree that it's hard to make a sales pitch for even level 6 considering you need to be at least at level 4 to understand why it might be desirable. I also agree with @c_L's observation that if you base your sales pitch on level 4-5 your going to create a lot of level 4-5 people who may be resistant to going higher, which isn't necessarily a bad thing (if you assume that average person is 0-1).

I think being lazy in an absolute sense and curious in an intermediate sense makes going beyond level 5 appealing.

[7Wannabe5]

but without a solitary easily measurable goal, what to optimize for?

Do it like you adjust all the different levels in the recording studio until you optimize "good."

[Jin+Guice]

@7w5, that's probably the best one sentence description of how to mix a record I've ever read.

Now my own sound engineer nerd analogy:

Wheaton 5: Make all of this instruments sound good by themselves (while soloed)
Wheaton 6: Make each individual song sound good
Wheaton 7: Make the album as a whole sound good (this is literally called "mastering")

This analogy is kind of a kick in the dick to level 5, because it's 101 stuff that optimizing every instrument will definitively not work for the song.