Things I Wish I Said
Shorter Marx
My takeaway is that Marx made a couple critical errors which are not just defects in his work, but which extrapolate to some of the excesses to which his ideas contributed.
First, the idea that there's a historical imperative, that there's an arrow of inevitable progress, is the kind of shocking mistake that leads to fanatical extremism. It isn't just wrong, it is the sort of Messiah-complex wrong that can get you Stalin or Pol Pot. It doesn't have to, but a big helping of humility and feeling like those who disagree maybe don't belong in re-education camps would be awesome.
Second, the idea that value is related to labor investment, is not just wrong-headed and delusional, it is the kind of error that gets you aggrieved victim kinds of reprisals. The absurd thought that participating in trade is exploitation rather than opportunity is pretty hard to overcome no matter how clear-eyed your economic history is. This mistake doesn't just implicitly set up class warfare and retaliation (with the accompanying messianic belief that opposition is evil), it pretty much explicitly endorses it.
So while it might be said that Marxism, like capitalism, is one of the two biggest social theories that have never been tried, I'm not sure that's really true. I think an honest assessment has to conclude that while these defects in Marx may not inevitably lead to gulags, they are the seeds out of which this kind of extremism grows. ¶ 10:38 PM 0 Comments
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Brad DeLong has a nice article about Marx as political and economic theorist.
My takeaway is that Marx made a couple critical errors which are not just defects in his work, but which extrapolate to some of the excesses to which his ideas contributed.
First, the idea that there's a historical imperative, that there's an arrow of inevitable progress, is the kind of shocking mistake that leads to fanatical extremism. It isn't just wrong, it is the sort of Messiah-complex wrong that can get you Stalin or Pol Pot. It doesn't have to, but a big helping of humility and feeling like those who disagree maybe don't belong in re-education camps would be awesome.
Second, the idea that value is related to labor investment, is not just wrong-headed and delusional, it is the kind of error that gets you aggrieved victim kinds of reprisals. The absurd thought that participating in trade is exploitation rather than opportunity is pretty hard to overcome no matter how clear-eyed your economic history is. This mistake doesn't just implicitly set up class warfare and retaliation (with the accompanying messianic belief that opposition is evil), it pretty much explicitly endorses it.
So while it might be said that Marxism, like capitalism, is one of the two biggest social theories that have never been tried, I'm not sure that's really true. I think an honest assessment has to conclude that while these defects in Marx may not inevitably lead to gulags, they are the seeds out of which this kind of extremism grows. ¶ 10:38 PM 0 Comments
Feeling unproductive
One of the main ones is expectations. I think that's often because thinking about something that you want to do is a lot easier than doing it. Even knowing that, it is hard to predict how much effort something will take. Let's say you read the humans can run a marathon in two hours. So out you go to the street, and two hours later, you've only gone nine miles! You feel very unproductive, but the reality is that while it may be true that someone has run a marathon in two hours, virtually no-one can do this. Or at the least not without years of training. So despite moving forwards at a steady clip, you may feel unproductive because you're comparing yourself to an unrealistic goal.
This happens quite a bit to all kinds of projects for several reasons. First, an estimate is made with imperfect knowledge, and it is often the unknowns that end up requiring a lot of effort. It's as if instead of estimating it was two hours to run a marathon, you estimated two hours to get to the top of that hill there, except for it turns out the hill is further away than you thought, and there's a cliff and a river in the way that you couldn't see.
Second, and often more importantly, estimates are made at emotionally optimistic times. There's a bug in human wetware which basically manifests itself as euphoria over a new project. That euphoria leads to very optimistic estimates of how easy it'll be, how little time it'll take, and so when reality doesn't match up, we feel unproductive.
Third, another characteristic of human psychology is that almost everyone believes themselves to be a couple levels of competence up from where they actually are. So when you think about a marathon, you think of yourself as a faster runner than you are, so you estimate the time shorter than you can actually do it. Same goes for other kinds of projects. This is probably why feelings of unproductivity are often demoralizing: they make us feel like we aren't as good at the things we thought we were good at as we thought. That's hard.
Another set of reasons productivity often feels low to us is about the mechanics of why estimates are often low: that is, what happens during the execution of the task itself that makes it take longer and require more effort than it seems like it ought to. I think this often boils down to three things: friction, distraction, and misdirection.
Friction is basically secondary work that has to get done to accomplish the main goal. If you're running a marathon, you have to drink water. The effort it takes to get the water, drink it, and deal with the wet pavement aren't directly involved in getting to the finish line, but you have to do it. There's always friction associated with every task. Sometimes parts of the task feel like friction, but aren't (they're just parts of the task you weren't accounting for), but often the friction is annoying and dispiriting because it is friction and nothing else. If you go grocery shopping, it can take a lot longer than you thought because you have to walk around the store a couple of times looking for that one thing, and then stand in line to pay. That's just friction: ideally those parts of the task would occupy zero time, but they don't. We're good at ignoring even predictable friction in estimates.
Distraction is time spent not working on the task, but instead working on other things, whether other (possibly important!) tasks or things that ultimately aren't that important. Stopping to read a magazine while shopping could be a distraction. Or you may realize while in the store that you need to do some important bank business and they have an in-store branch. Either one makes "shopping" potentially take a lot longer than it "ought," and so can feel demoralizing and unproductive.
Misdirection is effort you think is accomplishing the goal, but it turns out it isn't. It's as if while running the marathon, you think you are on the right road, but it turns out you overshot the course and ran a mile out of the way. Now you have to run back. You were running well the whole time, just not where you needed to be going. Unfortunately wasted effort like this is a fractal problem, and is probably a key source of misestimates. In our estimating minds, we are champs who would never make silly mistakes or get sidetracked. In reality, this can happen, and often does, and when it does, it can take a lot of time and feel very unproductive. It can happen on sub-sub-tasks which turn out not to contribute to the goal, or the whole goal itself may turn out to not be what you thought it would be.
What to do? I think some of the modern task management thinking is wise, but I suspect it often won't help. It is wise to be organized and on top of things. If your main problem is distraction, this is probably a big help. But I suspect that for most people, friction and misdirection are more of a problem than distraction. For those people, time management systems may be a source of friction and their granularity a risk of misdirection, and actually hurt more than they help. ¶ 10:08 PM 0 Comments
Thursday, April 9, 2009
It is hard to get things done. There's a whole industry around solving the problem. There's no question that a lot of people feel less productive than they wish they could be. Why is that? I think there's several reasons.
One of the main ones is expectations. I think that's often because thinking about something that you want to do is a lot easier than doing it. Even knowing that, it is hard to predict how much effort something will take. Let's say you read the humans can run a marathon in two hours. So out you go to the street, and two hours later, you've only gone nine miles! You feel very unproductive, but the reality is that while it may be true that someone has run a marathon in two hours, virtually no-one can do this. Or at the least not without years of training. So despite moving forwards at a steady clip, you may feel unproductive because you're comparing yourself to an unrealistic goal.
This happens quite a bit to all kinds of projects for several reasons. First, an estimate is made with imperfect knowledge, and it is often the unknowns that end up requiring a lot of effort. It's as if instead of estimating it was two hours to run a marathon, you estimated two hours to get to the top of that hill there, except for it turns out the hill is further away than you thought, and there's a cliff and a river in the way that you couldn't see.
Second, and often more importantly, estimates are made at emotionally optimistic times. There's a bug in human wetware which basically manifests itself as euphoria over a new project. That euphoria leads to very optimistic estimates of how easy it'll be, how little time it'll take, and so when reality doesn't match up, we feel unproductive.
Third, another characteristic of human psychology is that almost everyone believes themselves to be a couple levels of competence up from where they actually are. So when you think about a marathon, you think of yourself as a faster runner than you are, so you estimate the time shorter than you can actually do it. Same goes for other kinds of projects. This is probably why feelings of unproductivity are often demoralizing: they make us feel like we aren't as good at the things we thought we were good at as we thought. That's hard.
Another set of reasons productivity often feels low to us is about the mechanics of why estimates are often low: that is, what happens during the execution of the task itself that makes it take longer and require more effort than it seems like it ought to. I think this often boils down to three things: friction, distraction, and misdirection.
Friction is basically secondary work that has to get done to accomplish the main goal. If you're running a marathon, you have to drink water. The effort it takes to get the water, drink it, and deal with the wet pavement aren't directly involved in getting to the finish line, but you have to do it. There's always friction associated with every task. Sometimes parts of the task feel like friction, but aren't (they're just parts of the task you weren't accounting for), but often the friction is annoying and dispiriting because it is friction and nothing else. If you go grocery shopping, it can take a lot longer than you thought because you have to walk around the store a couple of times looking for that one thing, and then stand in line to pay. That's just friction: ideally those parts of the task would occupy zero time, but they don't. We're good at ignoring even predictable friction in estimates.
Distraction is time spent not working on the task, but instead working on other things, whether other (possibly important!) tasks or things that ultimately aren't that important. Stopping to read a magazine while shopping could be a distraction. Or you may realize while in the store that you need to do some important bank business and they have an in-store branch. Either one makes "shopping" potentially take a lot longer than it "ought," and so can feel demoralizing and unproductive.
Misdirection is effort you think is accomplishing the goal, but it turns out it isn't. It's as if while running the marathon, you think you are on the right road, but it turns out you overshot the course and ran a mile out of the way. Now you have to run back. You were running well the whole time, just not where you needed to be going. Unfortunately wasted effort like this is a fractal problem, and is probably a key source of misestimates. In our estimating minds, we are champs who would never make silly mistakes or get sidetracked. In reality, this can happen, and often does, and when it does, it can take a lot of time and feel very unproductive. It can happen on sub-sub-tasks which turn out not to contribute to the goal, or the whole goal itself may turn out to not be what you thought it would be.
What to do? I think some of the modern task management thinking is wise, but I suspect it often won't help. It is wise to be organized and on top of things. If your main problem is distraction, this is probably a big help. But I suspect that for most people, friction and misdirection are more of a problem than distraction. For those people, time management systems may be a source of friction and their granularity a risk of misdirection, and actually hurt more than they help. ¶ 10:08 PM 0 Comments
