Epistemic Status: A fun heuristic. Advice is directional.

We all are constantly making decisions about how to spend our time and resources, and I think making these decisions well is one of the most important meta-skills one can possibly have. Time spent valuably can quickly add up into new abilities and opportunities, time spent poorly will not be returned. One tool that I've found helpful in making these decisions is this: choose the option for which I have the highest number of reasons to do it. These can be reasons as simple as "I like it" or as complex as "I think this will raise the odds that I have an easy option for keeping my housing costs low in the future."

When applied, I've found that this works well in everyday time management questions, and I believe it's been helpful in larger decisions as well, although those are harder to evaluate.

Now, the obvious conflict with this heuristic is if you have one very strong reason to do/not do something that should trump all the other little reasons for and against. What to choose will come down to the specific situation, but I see the one-reasoner as making somewhat of a risky bet. It's fairly common for people to change their minds, find different things important, and move on. If you've changed your mind to the extent that whatever reason you had for doing X no longer applies, it may have been wasted time. In contrast, if you had many different reasons to do something and change, it's likely at least some of those reasons still apply.

Another reasonable response would be something like "Well, I already know what I should be doing with my time, yes, absent-minded scrolling is bad and exercising is good, what extra value does this framework actually give?" I think outside any direct effect on my immediate decision-making, it also helps me think more complexly about all the ways a given activity/lack of activity will affect me into the future. The more creative/exhaustive I am in coming up with reasons, the better I will be able to consider a variety of future outcomes. Also, it makes me value whatever I'm doing even more. It's kind of like the traditional "count your blessings," in that you gain a deeper appreciation for something when you explicitly lay out reasons for it.

Now, as you may have guessed, I came up with quite a few reasons for writing this! First, and mainly, I want to write more. I see writing (and posting it online) as a way I can increase the clarity/correctness of my own thoughts, as potentially helpful for me to find future jobs/opportunities, so I can meet and connect with smart and interesting people from around the world, as a way of practicing more focused computer usage, and as a way of learning and using new information. I wrote this piece in particular because it would be fairly short and simple, not require research, and provide a potential jumping-off point for some future post ideas about ways to add complexity/resilience to your life. It's also helpful since I don't always live up to this heuristic very well, but writing about it has, and I anticipate posting and endorsing it online will result in me following it better.

I'm taking part in the Halfhaven virtual blogging camp, so expect to see some more from me in the coming days. I plan to have a mix of more personal/practical stuff and some more researched policy/ai-related posts posts.