I’ve thought about this question quite a bit as well (not very productively though), and these are basically my thoughts on it so far:
the two extremes are most likely highly suboptimal, so it must indeed be a question of finding the right balance
it “feels” like “doing a bit of both” is a sensible heuristic and trying to calculate this out more thoroughly may be overkill, as there are too many unknowns to get to any reliable solution
but the above may also just be my laziness talking, as on the other hand, it also seems clear that shifting the balance a bit towards the optimum could easily increase your whole life’s output by a few %. Thus it would absolutely make sense to spend, say, a week or so, thinking deeply about this and at least trying to find a good balance
the answer likely isn’t a ratio, but always depends on the concrete opportunities (especially as, as others have pointed out, few things fall strictly in one of the other category, but often it’s a bit of both), which arise very often on the lower levels (e.g. “have this conversation or not” on a small level, “read this book” on a higher level) so it definitely make sense to follow some kind of heuristic for these cases
on even higher levels, with decisions such as “take this job where I can learn a lot vs this job where I have direct impact”, it certainly makes sense to not follow heuristics but investigate the concrete option(s) and estimate their effects on our personal development and impact
delaying our own impact to the future always bears some risk of value drift changing our plans, nullifying our impact
it’s possible that the best way to learn how to have much impact is to try to have much impact, so optimizing for impact is the dominant strategy, but that certainly depends on the concrete cases and may be more true for the more high level decisions than low level ones, and is also only true if you get enough and quick enough feedback to actually evaluate your impact and correct your approach
So in a nutshell, I haven’t in any way answered this for myself yet. I also haven’t come up with a useful heuristic yet and mostly just follow my gut, possibly erring on the self development side so far, which makes sense as that part is comparably easy/rewarding/forgiving, whereas outside facing impact considerations have some risk of failure and much increased uncertainty. So I guess at least for myself “focus more on impactful projects and less on reading books” would be a useful heuristic and very likely lead me closer to the optimum balance.
I’ve thought about this question quite a bit as well (not very productively though), and these are basically my thoughts on it so far:
the two extremes are most likely highly suboptimal, so it must indeed be a question of finding the right balance
it “feels” like “doing a bit of both” is a sensible heuristic and trying to calculate this out more thoroughly may be overkill, as there are too many unknowns to get to any reliable solution
but the above may also just be my laziness talking, as on the other hand, it also seems clear that shifting the balance a bit towards the optimum could easily increase your whole life’s output by a few %. Thus it would absolutely make sense to spend, say, a week or so, thinking deeply about this and at least trying to find a good balance
the answer likely isn’t a ratio, but always depends on the concrete opportunities (especially as, as others have pointed out, few things fall strictly in one of the other category, but often it’s a bit of both), which arise very often on the lower levels (e.g. “have this conversation or not” on a small level, “read this book” on a higher level) so it definitely make sense to follow some kind of heuristic for these cases
on even higher levels, with decisions such as “take this job where I can learn a lot vs this job where I have direct impact”, it certainly makes sense to not follow heuristics but investigate the concrete option(s) and estimate their effects on our personal development and impact
delaying our own impact to the future always bears some risk of value drift changing our plans, nullifying our impact
it’s possible that the best way to learn how to have much impact is to try to have much impact, so optimizing for impact is the dominant strategy, but that certainly depends on the concrete cases and may be more true for the more high level decisions than low level ones, and is also only true if you get enough and quick enough feedback to actually evaluate your impact and correct your approach
So in a nutshell, I haven’t in any way answered this for myself yet. I also haven’t come up with a useful heuristic yet and mostly just follow my gut, possibly erring on the self development side so far, which makes sense as that part is comparably easy/rewarding/forgiving, whereas outside facing impact considerations have some risk of failure and much increased uncertainty. So I guess at least for myself “focus more on impactful projects and less on reading books” would be a useful heuristic and very likely lead me closer to the optimum balance.