Conversation

My week at 33: nominally work 9-5, 5 days a week, chores on day 6, R&R day 7 My week at 46: 7-day cycle - Shitpost and warm-up day - Writing day - Part-work part half-ass-something day x2 - Tinkering day - Outing day - Recovery day Chores only in crisis mode
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Every philosophical idea you like pairs with a problem you’ve decided to live with in your life So the more philosophical you are, the more problems you’ve decided to live with
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Actually working is mainly problem solving for white-collar types, so going from 40 to 20 to 4 is mostly about just deciding to live with more problems. You’ll notice unphilosophical people aren’t willing to do that. They’ll attack all problems rather than live with any.
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Money is only peripherally involved. It determines your floor, not that you’re headed there by deciding to live with more and more problems. Non-philosophical types who get too much money create problems to fill their time.
Replying to
Deciding to have kids is probably the clearest case of makework. That’s why if you want a problem solved rather than just lived-with, give it to a parent.
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This was my breakthrough insight that launched my consulting— the realization that clients want to solve problem I’ve decided to just live with. So I just had to get theoretically mad at my own philosophies to generate advice and reactions.
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“What would I do if I decided not to live with the problem?” Suddenly all the laziness rationalization I mean philosophy turns into useful raw material.
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This is why with enough wealth, people with low patience for philosophical rationalization end up tackling the ultimate problem — mortality. Me, I’ve accepted living with that problem until I die 😆 The ultimate philosophical accommodation of a problem.
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Mediocritism is mainly about solving problems just well enough to be able to live with them but not well enough to be rid of them
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This is why executives are willing to pay for consulting but ambitious rank-and-file prefer coaches. Most problems at exec level are cheap to live with (“manage”), but really expensive to truly solve. You pick your “solve” battles by mediocritizing everything else.
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Coaches teach you how to work hard and solve problems in an area. That gets you promoted up to a point. To rise higher, you have to learn to half-ass every other problem. And most problems that rise to exec level are not fully solvable, only half-solvable, half-philisophizable.
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The true failure mode is picking the wrong 5% things to put in the “actually solve” bucket. The corresponding consultant failure mode is venturing into that 5% zone by accident and draining full-solving energy with unhelpful philosophizing.
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Pick your battles. Everything else is a half-assed philosophy problem, so talking to somebody full-ass philosophizing it helps sometimes.
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A lot of this comes down to being a bad influence in the right places. Being conscientious everywhere means either being a successful perfectionist at a trivial life, or ineffective at an ambitious one.
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This thread is kinda half-assed. Some sloppy inconsistencies and loose ends I’m just going to live with for now unless I decide to turn it into an essay. Caveat emptor.
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