Focusing like a State

See here for the idea behind writing kata.

All the most productive people agree: in order to do the work that matters to you, you have to be able to say "no" to almost everything else:

A mathematician was explaining his work to Tate, who looked bored. Eventually the mathematician asked "You don't find this interesting?" "No, no," said Tate, "I think it is very interesting, but I don't have time to be interested in everything that's interesting."

There are very few hours in the day, and when you're trying to do something no one else has, you often find yourself in a race (unwitting or not) to complete your result — a race where every moment matters, where even self-care and sleep are liable to suffer to try to achieve your goal.^[1][2]

I have a theory that a lot more people could accomplish exceptional things, except they're missing at least one piece. Cremieux models the baseline here; in summary, if you look at people who are all three of exceptionally smart, stable, and hard-working, you end up with a highly rarified subgroup of people. These are the people we tend to think of when we think of generational talent.

But what if someone's smart, but struggles to work hard in a single direction? (For now, I ignore deficiencies in the other areas.) Well, my theory is that a great many of them could make superlative contributions in some area by virtue of some kind of "mental prosthesis"... they might never be generational talents, but they could do a lot better than they are currently, or would in a state of nature.

Another common denominator of exceptional people is that they are dismissive of "systems," and normally I would agree with them. Obsessing over your Zettelkasten or reading life hacking blogs looking for that "magic spark" that will make everything fall into place are almost certainly doomed ventures... but.

Once upon a time I had a large amount of arduino "stuff." I had a vague notion that "one day" I was going to learn to design circuits and program microcontrollers, and so I held on to it for a number of years.

Then one day, I was at a store — say, The Container Store — looking at boxes to organize my stuff, and in a moment of shocking lucidity I thought "why am I looking to spend more on this hobby that I never practice?" Some people have hobbies, and some people's hobbies are putting the objects that symbolize having a hobby into neatly ordered boxes... and I did not want to become one of the latter.

So, I sold it all; one lot, listed on Craigslist, and converted into $100 cash.

I collect things: bookmarks, pdfs, todos, ideas for projects, aspirations... and they weigh on me.

Lately, something has clicked, and I found a way to deal with the detritus of a life of curiosity: instead of declaring "aspiration bankruptcy" and tossing it all out (I could never! the Loss Aversion!), I have been repurposing an idea which I originally got from the Obsidian world.

Rather than think of what something is (a book, on physics, for programmers), think about the context in which you would like to find the thing again. Sometimes, the context is simple: "Buy DVDs" contains a list of links to stores that still sell and specialize in optical media. More often, the context is a mood, or a feeling: "Discover new technologies," where I stash away all those articles and blog posts for software that solves a problem that I may never have. If I need them, now I know where to find them.

Now, this is the key: like the arduino stuff, giving related stuff a space allows me to never think of it again. I see a thing, I give that thing a name (or a context, or name the potential me who would want that thing), and then I let it aggregate to it all the other things that represent that potential self... and by consolidating that self in one place, I can ignore it completely.

When my digital self is just an undifferentiated mass of intentions, it's difficult for me to say goodbye to the idea of those selves... but the box on the shelf cleanly contains exactly what it says on the tin, and helps me avoid the pain of saying goodbye. If I ever have to go looking for it again, its always right there for me.