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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Advice for newly busy people, published by Severin T. Seehrich on May 11, 2023 on LessWrong.
After writing "Advice for interacting with busy people", I was asked to write a follow-up on advice for newly busy people. So, here's a quick list of tools and mental models that help me prioritize.
This list is by no means comprehensive. It's just the tools I know and have loved. Take what's useful, and drop what doesn't fit your brain and life.
1. Prioritizing between projects
a. Apply the Tomorrow Rule.
When someone asks you to join an exciting project that's due half a year from now, it is very, very tempting to say "yes". You'll immediately have a vivid imagination of the shiny outcome, while the workload is far enough in the future to not cross your mind. To mitigate this tendency, it makes sense to apply the Tomorrow Rule. It goes as such: "Am I committed enough to this that I'd clear up time in my schedule tomorrow to make it happen?"
b. If things get too much, do a Productivity Purge.
If you already have too many projects on your plate and can't make reasonable progress on any of them, you might want to go through a round of Cal Newport's productivity purge algorithm. The steps:
"When it feels like your schedule is becoming too overwhelmed, take out a sheet of paper and label it with three columns: professional, extracurricular, and personal. Under “professional” list all the major projects you are currently working on in your professional life (if you’re a student, then this means classes and research, if you have a job, then this means your job, etc). Under “extracurricular” do the same for your side projects (your band, your blog, your plan to write a book). And under “personal” do the same for personal self-improvement projects (from fitness to reading more books).
Under each list try to select one or two projects which, at this point in your life, are the most important and seem like they would yield the greatest returns. Put a star by these projects.
Next, identify the projects that you could stop working on right away with no serious consequences. Cross these out.
Finally, for the projects that are left unmarked, come up with a 1-3 week plan for finalizing and dispatching them. Many of these will be projects for which you owe someone something before you can stop working on them. Come up with a crunch plan for the near future for shutting these down as quickly as possible.
Once you completed your crunch plan you’ll be left with only a small number of important projects. In essence, you have purged your schedule of all but a few contenders to be your next Theory of Relativity. Here’s the important part: Try to go at least one month without starting any new projects. Resist, at all costs, committing to anything during this month. Instead, just focus, with an Einsteinian intensity, on your select list."
2. Prioritizing between people
At some point in January/February, I felt pretty lonely and decided to make a list of all the lovely people I know and spend too little time with. After writing down the names of 40 people in Berlin alone and more in other cities, I realized what was the problem: I fully optimized for creating loose ties, for getting the spark of novelty and knowing what's going on in my various communities. In the meantime, I didn't commit enough to anyone as that I'd know who to call when I'm feeling low.
So - you might want to create two networks simultaneously, which work by different rules:
A large network of loose ties. These people are there for uncommitted play, for exchanging knowledge and occasional favors, for having as many people as possible in your life who know somebody who knows somebody who happens to be really skilled at that particular thing. Treat them with kindness and integrity, but don't hesitate to say "no" if your heart isn't...
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