Worked on 220 problems at once.
(I love the sound of that.)
So I first typed them up and grouped them a bit.
Then did nothing for a day besides watching TV, writing stuff and so on. Anyway.
First meta run: How do these problems relate? What are obvious connection, dependencies, sub-problems?
It’s clear that some problems are just different instances of the same general case. For example, there are several people I’d like to get in contact with again, or multiple languages I want to learn.
Also, some problems don’t look like “real” problems in that they all flow from the same psychological issue, which, if fixed, would make them all disappear.
Some are also resource problems, in that there’s a ton of stuff I want to do, but only so little I actually pull off. Similarly, some problems are easy to solve and just require minor attention. For example, there are various software upgrades I ought to do and which would only take 10 minutes or so each. However, I refuse to do anything yet because I want a general solution. It does me no good if I fix all those problems only to get swamped again in a month. It sucks now, but I don’t want it to suck again and again.
About 15 problem groups, with about 50 sub-groups in total. Better, but still intractable and not sustainable.
Second meta run: What are the motivations? What algorithm produced them? When they are signals, what value are they trying to signal? Why do I even care?
Some more meaningful groupings and I’m now able to reduce everything to about 5 main problems with lots of minor instances that I have reasonable attacks for. I know how to do the rest. This actually fixes much of my anxiety and I feel ready to tackle the problems, after I set up some general structures that turn them into ratchets.
Except for one.
Which is the main issue, really. I have no idea how to make any money without, you know, killing myself over it.
For reasons that I really should talk about more, I’ve done some changes and now find that I actually have very little use for money itself. I currently have like 200 eurons of discretionary income a month, and that’s plenty. I mean, I buy a book, maybe a game, rarely some hardware. I’m not even trying and I’m already living like a hermit.
I really should look into low-income alternatives. Which I’m doing now.
Also wrote a blog post about why self-help doesn’t work and akrasia can’t be fixed, not because it’s a particularly revolutionary idea, but because I couldn’t fit it into a tweet, and because I only recently realized how maximizing difficulty could be intentional. This has lots of obvious implications, but because they are so obvious, I won’t talk about them.