In 2003, Quicksilver introduced me to the striking notion of "wu wei" as applied to software—effortless action, doing without doing, no decisions or cognition required; creates a feeling of speed. Can be a powerful design property! (e.g. iOS scrolling)
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Relatedly, I think checklists and playbooks access a weak form of this feeling—submission to a process, "becoming" the process. It can be really powerful to take something that normally requires decisions/will and to turn it into an "executable strategy."
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It's one thing I like about spaced repetition as a mechanism. Say that you’d like to study cell metabolism. Without SRS, you need to make a plan ("I study cell biology on Tuesday"), set up some trigger to help you remember the plan, and summon the will to execute it repeatedly.
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But if you have an active SRS practice, you can throw some prompts into your library and be confident that you’ll engage over time. You don’t need to decide how often you’ll study or to exert willpower to study those particular prompts—only to show up for daily SRS practice.
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This is very unlike the feeling one has when, say, maintaining an inbox, which is full of weighty decisions! Extremely un-"wu wei."
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One odd tension: SRS involves both effortlessness & diligence. You show up to your session w/o specific expectations, but you engage attentively with what's there. It's ultimately a tool for serious people; it’s about deepening your relationship with whatever you care about most.
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How does a system like this work when your level of motivation for a given topic or item is low? I.e. unable to “engage attentively”. Do you think this can be trained?
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From an exercise on ethos for the spaced repetition platform I'm building:
