Now this is an exciting topic, and I’m glad you’ve decided to share this with the EA forum.
I really agree with the core idea of living “like you only have 10 years left”, which to me speaks about living with intention and some sort of “aware urgency” (where you’re aware of the limited time you have in your life, and the general narrowing of choices as time goes by) rather than going with the flow. I honestly think more people should adopt this way of living. It’s a good reminder to be intentional and to stop wasting time.
But I do have to disagree with some points which, in my opinion, kind of do more harm to the argument rather than good.
The idea that accelerating your personal speed somehow translates to better outcomes is a rather bold assumption, because speed (or even optimization) isn’t the same as impact. There’s no real argument for why consuming more inputs or rejecting anything “slow” leads to better thinking, better judgment, or better decisions. In fact, the symptoms you described at some point in your article are the things that degrade decision quality.
The framing of the “fast world vs. slow world” creates a false binary. It works if you want to simplify some things for the sake of the argument, but you shouldn’t do that if you base the rest of your ideas on it. Also, from personal experience, any serious attempt to engage with complex problems requires not just urgency, but stability. Because you do need feedback loops, error correction, reflection, and to be able to course-correct at any given time based on concrete information, because these problems usually don’t have a one-and-done solution. I think speed-running through these kinds of situations will bring “tech debt” (or the mental equivalent of it) along with it.
I also think what you’re describing isn’t really speed, it’s just some degree of lack of prioritization. Because it describes reacting to urgency by cramming in more input, not by deciding what is actually a priority.
But I’m definitely with you on the need to treat time seriously.
Now this is an exciting topic, and I’m glad you’ve decided to share this with the EA forum.
I really agree with the core idea of living “like you only have 10 years left”, which to me speaks about living with intention and some sort of “aware urgency” (where you’re aware of the limited time you have in your life, and the general narrowing of choices as time goes by) rather than going with the flow. I honestly think more people should adopt this way of living. It’s a good reminder to be intentional and to stop wasting time.
But I do have to disagree with some points which, in my opinion, kind of do more harm to the argument rather than good.
The idea that accelerating your personal speed somehow translates to better outcomes is a rather bold assumption, because speed (or even optimization) isn’t the same as impact. There’s no real argument for why consuming more inputs or rejecting anything “slow” leads to better thinking, better judgment, or better decisions. In fact, the symptoms you described at some point in your article are the things that degrade decision quality.
The framing of the “fast world vs. slow world” creates a false binary. It works if you want to simplify some things for the sake of the argument, but you shouldn’t do that if you base the rest of your ideas on it. Also, from personal experience, any serious attempt to engage with complex problems requires not just urgency, but stability. Because you do need feedback loops, error correction, reflection, and to be able to course-correct at any given time based on concrete information, because these problems usually don’t have a one-and-done solution. I think speed-running through these kinds of situations will bring “tech debt” (or the mental equivalent of it) along with it.
I also think what you’re describing isn’t really speed, it’s just some degree of lack of prioritization. Because it describes reacting to urgency by cramming in more input, not by deciding what is actually a priority.
But I’m definitely with you on the need to treat time seriously.