In other words, I’m interested in ways I can design my work-flow/environment/habits to avoid bike-shedding (aka the Law of Triviality), which is the behavior of “substituting a hard and important problem for an easy and inconsequential one” [1]. Examples include 1) looking into an interesting idea that you ran across while doing a research task, even though it is irrelevant to your goal, 2) spending unnecessary time on the formatting of an essay rather than on the actual writing, 3) buying things/building systems to make very minor productivity improvements instead of doing your tasks for the day.
[Question] Ideas for avoiding optimizing the wrong things day-to-day?
In other words, I’m interested in ways I can design my work-flow/environment/habits to avoid bike-shedding (aka the Law of Triviality), which is the behavior of “substituting a hard and important problem for an easy and inconsequential one” [1]. Examples include 1) looking into an interesting idea that you ran across while doing a research task, even though it is irrelevant to your goal, 2) spending unnecessary time on the formatting of an essay rather than on the actual writing, 3) buying things/building systems to make very minor productivity improvements instead of doing your tasks for the day.