[extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003, Karen Rand Smigrodzki wrote:

> You have accomplished a lot, RB, but do you or have you ever had a problem
> with the competing interests such that you end up unable to commit to any
> one subject to the detriment of them all? It is my understanding that that
> is DL's difficulty. (I know it is mine!)

Sure.  In many cases I have unfinished things going on.  For example the
Nano at Home project sat idle for a couple of years.  But I did do something
similar to what Hal suggested -- I wrote a paper on the topic, which I
update from time to time as I run across related information.  I also
linked it in such a way that the robots crawling the net would eventually
find and index it.  Then a couple of years later, someone finds it
likes the idea and decides to do something with it -- he puts up a web
site, now we are up to about 90 people joining the project with several
people really playing active roles.  If I had tried to do it all myself
then I probably would never had time to review chapters for the books
that Robert Freitas has/will publish.  Though I still have not found
time to review the chapters that Mez sent to me (so sometimes you have
to accept that things may not get done -- though the chapters are in
my unread "pile" that I would like to get through).

> If you have had such a problem, how do you make yourself focus or commit?

Often its a question of defining goals that you can do and setting
priorities.  If you can't set them yourself then working with someone
else to set them helps a lot.  So for my unread pile I try to go
through it from time to time and order things by importance to me.
It would be helpful if I could do the same with everything else
in my life because comparing priorities in very different areas
is a learned skill -- particularly when one is dealing with possible
goals in areas where one has little or no experience so one is attempting
to compare apples with attractive art to hang on the wall.  (Apples
I knew I liked because my mother used to bake great apple pies with
an old family recipe.  Art on the other hand required my living in
New York in my 20's and deciding that I liked art deco (so I have
several Erte prints) as well as impressionists (so I have one
Chagall that hangs over my fireplace).  So there was probably
a 15 year difference in learning how to compare the value of
attaining those goals (eating pie or appreciating types of art).

Robert