The Point of Easy Progress

[-]Vaughn Papenhausen5y50

I really liked this. I thought the little graphics were a nice touch. And the idea is one of those ones that seems almost obvious in retrospect, but wasn't obvious at all before reading the post. Looking back I can see hints of it in thoughts I've had before, but that's not the same as having had the idea. And the handle ("point of easy progress") is memorable, and probably makes the concept more actionable (it's much easier to plan a project if you can have thoughts like "can I structure this in such a way that there is a point of easy progress, and that I will hit it within a short enough amount of time that it's motivating?").

[-]Daniel Kokotajlo5y40

This is novel, practical productivity advice--thanks! I'll try it out and see how it goes.

I think this post would be even better if you had some examples of applying the advice (the list of steps in particular) to a real-world project.

[-]Elisey Gretchko5y20

Thank you for sharing, glad to hear this framework helped you through some projects. I have a few remarks/questions:

Could it be that the idea of "The point of easy progress" may become a case of short-sightedness? I have trouble keeping those two apart. I think the illustrations you provided help to make my point. This notion of "from now on, it's easy and smooth downhill" looks similar to the problem you illustrated in the first picture in the short-sightedness paragraph. Because you risk thinking "ah, I'm at this sweetspot point where there's only flow and success" and then you stumble against the unpredictable problems that reality has to offer. I see it more as a human desire than an actual possible state. Or to word it differently, the idea of “point of easy progress” may become an imperfect extrapolation in itself. So the key question here: how do you differentiate the point of easy progress with the false assumption of a neverending downhill to succes?

Also, I'm not sure if our 'willpower' is sustained by the point of easy progress as a kind of path of least resistance. I tend to agree with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his concept of ‘flow’ that we tend to seek challenge in order to enjoy what we do, especially when it becomes too easy. On the contrary, too much of a challenge indeed demotivates. But it seems to be more about the interplay between too easy and too hard than the notion of easy progress. If tasks become to easy without sufficient challenge, we tend to get bored. However, I assume your point of easy progress doesn't necessary mean that there's no challenges ahead, but it might seem so with the depiction of 'cool, relax, it's now the forces of gravity and momentum that take it over, lay back and enjoy the ride'.

Of course, a lot depends on how you define certain concepts. Success, and motivation/willpower to do certain behaviour don't imply each other (you can be motivated to do ‘unsuccessful things’). Or you might be successful in a (what now appears to be) an easy task but won't make much more progress. For instance, you can learn to be very good at simple maths up to a point where your success rate is 100 % (full marks on math test with simple additions and subtractions), but you need to encounter this uphill part where things become disorienting, frustrating and difficult to solve more complex problems in order to progress in your knowledge.

Please correct me if I misunderstood certain concepts. I’m curious to what you think about the above.

Edit: some grammar and spelling mistakes

[-]silentbob5y20

Thanks a lot for your comment! I think you're absolutely right with most points and I didn't do the best possible job of covering these things in the post, partially due to wanting to keeping things somewhat simplistic and partially due to lack of full awareness of these issues. The conflict between the point of easy progress and short-sightedness is most likely quite real and it seems indeed unlikely that once such a point is reached there will be no setbacks whatsoever. And having such an optimistic expectation would certainly be detrimental. In the end the point of easy progress is an ideal to strive for when planning, but not an anspiration to fully maintain at all times.

Regarding willpower I agree that challenge is an important factor, and my idea was not so much that tasks themselves should become trivially easy, but that working on them becomes easy in the way that they excite you. Again that's something I could have more clear in the text.

but you need to encounter this uphill part where things become disorienting, frustrating and difficult to solve more complex problems in order to progress in your knowledge

I'm not so sure about this. I like to think there must be ways to learn things, even maths, that entail a vast majority of positive experiences for the person learning it. This might certainly involve a degree of confusion, but maybe in the form of surprise and curiosity and not necessarily frustration. That being said, 1) I might be wrong in my assumption that such a thing is realistically possible and 2) this is not at all the experience most people are actually having when expanding their skills, so it is certainly important to be able to deal well with frustration and disorientation. Still, it makes a lot of sense to me to reduce these negative experiences wherever possible, unless you think that such negative experiences themselves have some inherent value and can't be replaced.

[-]Elisey Gretchko5y10

Thanks for your humbleness in return.

I think it remains valuable from an idealistic point of view. And as with many idealistic views, the problems mainly arise when things become a little bit too absolute, not letting enough room for changing context. Nevertheless, this idealism can still have a value.

Take for instance the first remark I made about the idea of “point of easy progress” becoming a case of “short-sightedness”. I find value in the idea of recognizing certain points in your progress and using them as a drive to continue and motivate yourself. As a matter of fact, this appeared to help you through some projects, and in the end, isn’t that what’s more important? I also have the impression that this is mostly the core of your message. The element that made me question was the idea of the “event horizon: once there, there’s no stopping” as an absolute statement that would be difficult to defend in practice. Lastly, there’s also the choice to approach this descriptively as how progress goes, or normative, as how progress should go.

Regarding the need for frustration, challenge and so on, I also use a lot of assumptions stemming from my background in Psychology and existentialism. I hold the idea that positive experience appears to be relative instead of absolute, and positivity loses its valance without any negativity as a context. In this sense, some kind of suffering (how dramatic it may sound) is essential. It appears to me that it’s natural for people to hedonically maximize pleasure, and avoid suffering, which I believe is a good thing, a verry Human thing to do. However, we sometimes struggle with this kind of neurosis by overemphasizing this chase for the good and pleasure in a world where suffering is inevitable.

The good academic in me would elaborate on this perspective and provide further evidence to this idea, however, it isn’t my intention for this comment to persuade anyone. Instead of me philosophizing about it, it might be more meaningful to have people trying out this ideal and reporting their good and bad experiences to update the model.

[-]becausecurious5y20

Thank you for sharing this perspective! Couple thoughts:

I was implicitly using similar approach by front-loading planning and creative work. Once that's done one can just execute the tasks without switching back into 'planning' mode.
For the (repetitive) negative tasks, I would add considering automating them or minimizing your effort. It might also make sense to understand what exactly you don't like about them - sometimes this is something trivial and easy fixable (like some inefficiency).
'Replacing guilt' series ("How we will be measured" post in particular) gave me a new perspective for getting rid of negative tasks (and tasks in general). Basically some of them might have nothing to do with the actual success of the project and instead just be traditions or rudiments. So instead of asking 'is this actually necessary', I suggest to ask 'is this important for the project and why'.

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The Point of Easy Progress

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The Difficulty Landscape and Why the Approach Matters

Short-Sightedness

The Point of Easy Progress

Conclusion