> [!tldr] If you care about X, don't work on things *related* to X, work on X. [[So much of productivity, communication, and fitness advice comes down to really knowing your goal.|Know what you care about]] - take care to not [[Substituting Questions|unknowingly substitute]] things *related* to the thing as the thing itself. What you're doing should directly affect what you want. If you care about X, resources spent on Y will not help. > [!example] Sneaky example: > If you care about getting fit, [[Large Language Models|LLMs]] can evaluate tons of options and help put together a plan. [[Agentic AI]] can update your calendar and create [[Checklists]] of tasks to get you to the gym... > > ...but none of those things **are** the fitness you seek. > > They are sure "feel" like they're the thing... but they aren't the thing. Evaluate opportunities against what you actually want. **If you have to use a lot of words to describe how it will help - it probably won't help much**.[^1] --- Below this line ☝️ is everything I wrote to figure out what to put above it. ## Long Story Long Again there's a theme i'm circling around in my head. SImilar to the [[Move one thing through its full range of motion]] - I'm not *quite* sure if it's a new idea or mere an amalgamation and rearticulation of many others. Cal Newport suggests there's a connection between something Jerry Seinfeld said back when he quit producing his show - right at the height of its popularity. He quit because he was burnt out. An interviewer asked if he ever thought about bringing in a consultancy to help make things more efficient. Seinfeld said if **they weren't funny, then they couldn't help him**. The thing he cared about was creating the best, funniest, and most interesting script they could. That's what mattered. They could help make his things *around* what mattered – but they couldn't make what mattered better. I think being able to cleanly articulate the thing you actually care about is rare. Cal Newport suggests this is what AI is doing for us. It's helping us with the things *around* what we care about - the *proxy measures* for productivity - but aren't great at delivering the real value. Emails sent, quantity of tasks generated and checked off, those aren't tangible values. We have proxies for the things we *think* we care about or we *think* are productive - but they are just proxy measures. They aren't the thing that's actually important. They are, at best, one step removed from that thing. In reality - they are likely further than that. If you can about X - you should not invest in resources that help you achieve W or Y. You can convince yourself that "W leads to X" or "Y always follows X" – but those aren't X. Resources spent on W and Y aren't going to yield the ROI that resources spent directly on X would get you. Moreover by allowing yourself to spend resources on W and Y, you dilute focus. You can forget that you don't care about W and Y. Every step removed the task at hand is with regard to the thing you care about is, almost by definition, a wasted step. What's this about? - Is this more about knowing what's valuable? Being able to articulate it cleanly? Being able to draw neat lines around it? - Is it more about evaluating courses of action based on how directly they impact that thing? - Is it about accidental substitution of what's important for related things? - Here's where [[The XY Problem]] actually *does* overlap with this. - This is probably just [[Stephen Covey's Main Thing Quote|The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.]] - [[A Rock is Simple but Doesn't Do Your Taxes|Simplicity isn't that simple]] - It's tangentially related to [[Example of Knowing Your Goal]]. - [[So much of productivity, communication, and fitness advice comes down to really knowing your goal.]] covers the "know what's valuable" - this is about realizing that we can unknowingly substitute improving Y when we actually care about X. - This is also related to having a [[Mission Statement]]. - It's *sort of* related to [[The magic you're looking for is in the work you keep attempting to avoid]] - but the attempts here are subconscious. Sort of a [[Planning is Often Procrastinating]]... but this is more about how directly the thing you are doing relates to the thing you want. > I want to get fit. So I talked with an LLM about exercise. I subscribed to /r/fitness and read about a bunch of different strength training and cardio programs. I had an LLM put together a hybrid plan based on a couple of the things that felt like they fit my goals. I loaded that plan into my calendar and made checklists about how I'll get from my house to the gym. > *...did you move any weights?* > Whoa there... not so fast. **** # More ## Source - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-MuzrVJv8Q [^1]: Because number of words is a good proxy for simplicity, and this note is essentially advocating for [[Do the Simplest Thing]].