So You Wanna De-Bog Yourself

every moment I dither is a moment I suffer

a little eddy in the spacetime continuum where I can hide out while I cross a few more things off my to-do list

Some problems are like getting a diploma: you work at it for a while, and then you're done forever. Learning how to ride a bike is a classic diploma problem .

But most problems aren’t like that. They’re more like toothbrushing problems : you have to work at them forever until you die. You can’t, as far as I know, just brush your teeth really really... See more

About half of my friends kind of hate their jobs, so they're moderately unhappy most of the time, but never unhappy enough to leave. This is the mediocrity trap : situations that are bad-but-not-too-bad keep you forever in their orbit because they never inspire the frustration it takes to achieve escape velocity.

The mediocrity trap is a nasty way t... See more

Whenever you chicken out, you don't just feel the pain of cowardice; you miss out on the pleasure of courage.

Here’s one of my favorite bad escape plans: I’ll just be a different person in the future. Like, “I know I hate working out, but in the future I will overcome this by not being such a baby about it.” Or, “I find quantum physics boring, so I’ll just learn about it later, when I find it more interesting.”

These are fantastical metamorphoses . I have n... See more

About half of my friends kind of hate their jobs, so they're moderately unhappy most of the time, but never unhappy enough to leave. This is the mediocrity trap : situations that are bad-but-not-too-bad keep you forever in their orbit because they never inspire the frustration it takes to achieve escape velocity.

The mediocrity trap is a nasty way t... See more

the pleasure of courage

It's scary to admit that you can't control the future; it's a lot easier to distract yourself by trying to optimize every decision, no matter how insignificant.