Conversation

We've got a new post on Commonplace! 👉 A Better Way To Allocate Your Career Time

A Better Way To Allocate Your Career Time

How do you evaluate if a career activity is worth doing? By looking at its component tasks, and calculating the information rate of each step.

Replying to

I am confused by the wording of the expected time saved example, in your post and the original: "In our scenario above, it makes more sense to attempt Task A instead of Task C, because if Task A fails you save 240 minutes (which means 0.1 x 240 = 24 minutes in expectation)."

Replying to

and

It seems like this should read: "In our scenario above, it makes more sense to attempt Task A instead of Task C, because if Task A [succeeds] you save 240 minutes (which means 0.1 x 240 = 24 minutes in expectation)."

Replying to

and

Oh, it’s [fail], not [succeed], because if Task A fails, then you don’t even have to do Task B (your entire approach is flawed). And since Task B takes 240 mins, you can just view that as time savings.

12:03 AM · May 23, 2019Tweetbot for iΟS

Replying to

and

Sorry, I meant if Task A fails, you don’t have to do Task C. The assumption is that if one task fails, you’ll have to start over.

Replying to

and

Ah! So A is superfluous whether C succeeds (A is made redundant) or C fails (A and C depend on a common premise that's faulty). I missed the connection there. Thanks!