I have just made an important discovery about my mental limitations and my response to them. I’ve confirmed something I had already known, that my mental stack for sub-tasks is finite. For a while I’ve been troubled occasionally by a nearly overwhelming emotional need to do anything else besides my current work. For a few months now I have been seeking, opportunistically, to understand this emotional state because it seemed completely at odds with my goals and my usual relentless need to understand things.

The idea here is there are often tasks that have hidden or unrealized requirements. An example is you start out to vacuum the rug, and you need to clean up the clutter and move furniture, but when you move the furniture you discover that the leg on the chair is so loose that it is unsafe, so you go to repair it only to find that your out of wood glue and finishing nails. And to make it to the hardware store you need to stop and get gas and go to the ATM for cash. So when you originally set out to vacuum the rug you never would have said, okay well I’d better go get gas and some cash before I get started. I’ve heard that this phenomenon is referred to as yak shaving. But I think most people have experienced this, and typically the stacks of additional tasks don’t get too deep. However, in my work it is nearly a daily occurrence that my projects uncover things I could never have known until the work was begun. Some block your progress and some don’t, some are big, but some are small. I’ve found it’s the small ones that block your progress that were really stacking up on me and causing a problem.

If it is a big problem, meaning a full project in it’s own right, and is not blocking my current progress, I simply make a note that this new thing needs to be done too and continue on my way. Even if it blocks my progress, I’ll go ahead and shelve the first task and take on the second one. But if it is a small problem and blocking my progress, I just switch to this new task, and try to mentally retain all the context that got me there. Generally this works, but, often my extra tasks go down so deep that I reach a point where it is impossible to retain the whole context. This mental overload is real, and painful, and I’ve been dealing with it all wrong.

When I reach this point of mental overload I run away screaming! Well not literally, but I certainly do try and do anything else. Suddenly it seems like checking my email, or going to get a coke at the vending machine is the most important thing in the world. I think there are other factors in play as well, such as, if the driving project behind these sub-tasks is something that is only mildly interesting or something I loathe then the threshold for the number of sub-tasks I am willing to endure is much smaller.

The breakthrough in my thinking was realizing that this overwhelming need to go find and clean my white tennis shoes was in direct response to learning I had yet another task to be pushed onto the stack. So the emotional response was because I was no longer able to hold the whole of my current task in my head, and I have now set up a contradiction.

I know the thing I am doing is important and more important than the new thing because it is bigger and implies the new thing, so to prevent myself from losing the broader context I will not work on the new sub-task so I don’t lose any of the important details of the super task. But I also know that I cannot proceed on the broader task without working on the sub-task. As this contradiction leaves me nothing to actually do I might as well get a coke and avoid the whole irresolvable mess.

Now this has been a source of guilt and loss of productivity for me for a while because when in that mess I’m not making progress on my project. But from David Allen and Jean Moroney I’ve already learned the solution to mental overload. That is to write things down.

So the strategy I’ve just developed is when I recognize this feeling to stop and ask myself, “Are you overloaded?” If the answer is yes, then I simply need to write down the context I am in danger of losing. At this time I suspect that will consist of a list of the outstanding tasks that are standing in my mind.

If the answer to that question is not, yes, I have a backup question that has helped me with procrastination before that is, “What do you want?” I mean this in a broad way, basically, it helps me bring to mind the reasons behind undertaking the tasks in the first place.

Apparently keeping your old software up to date is important, if you still use it and it is publicly accessible.

I noticed my brother’s away site had a huge spam problem, which I thought odd, since I had installed a spam filter a long time ago.

I logged in and noticed the spam filter was missing in action. It wasn’t just disabled or working wrong, it was gone. This combined with the fact that a few weeks back everyone who commented on the site was listed as “Anonymous” regardless of what information they entered finally clicked in that some script-kiddie nonsense was going on.

I saw that someone had managed to upload a handful of files into the /tmp directory I would guess compromising some well known flaw in WordPress version 1.5, and make an entry in the DB to activate their files as plugins. It turns out the filter wasn’t actually gone just hidden from me and disabled.

No matter I just kept his data, installed the newest version of WordPress and I’ve fixed both of those annoying problems. Now I’ll just have to remind myself to keep those sites up to date. I also took the opportunity to disable a couple of sites that I know aren’t really functioning anymore but may have had code accessible to the outside world. So if you were counting on my test install of Trac for anything, tough luck.

Becoming depressed by the increased destruction of individual rights by the government is quite easy these days. The fact that the current administration is violating contract rights, firing the CEO of a corporation, and forcing banks to take bailout money among many other examples of statism are all very ominous indeed.

To continue this trend, today, I received an email from Senator Casey singing his own praises for his role in the further meddling with the credit markets.

As is typical when I receive such self-glorying proclamations from my elected representatives I take a moment and compose a letter responding to them and encouraging them to uphold individual rights as an absolute as is the necessary and only purpose of a rational and moral government.

I began writing my response somewhat lethargically but when I organized my thoughts it brought to mind a particular passage from Atlas Shrugged which provided the fuel to complete task. I decided then to look it up and to share it here.

I could say to you that you do not serve the public good–that nobody’s good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices–that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation–as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won’t. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own–I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being’s right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!

Hank is the man!

I’ve realized another perfectionist tendency that I’ve been letting defeat me. The result has been that the big hard (and interesting) tasks are starving for attention because the little tasks are being given center stage of the always elusive and much coveted big block of time.

I’ve learned through my years of focusing on productivity with increasing responsibility that you aren’t going to be able to sit and work on a problem for 10 hours straight without lots of other stuff just exploding. The obvious solution to this is to break things up from 10 hour tasks into smaller chunks. That way the chunks can be interleaved throughout your day, and you work in layers[^1].

The problem arrises is that some tasks can’t be chunked up, they are hard, consequently they are the ones I enjoy the most. Sitting down and really thinking about a hard problem to come up with a clean solution is one of the things I enjoy most. But perversely I will resist starting the hard tasks.

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It’s a shame that the great business producers continue to sanction completely irresponsible government. Read this in Warren Buffet’s annual report for Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.

“Whatever the downsides may be, strong and immediate action by government was essential last year if the financial system was to avoid a total breakdown.”

Since we all know that sacrificing the strong to pay for the mistakes of the weak and then pretending there wasn’t an underlying problem always fixes everything.

I read a post at NoodleFood this morning, 1 in 7 Americans functionally illiterate. And it reminded me of how grades are treated versus knowledge. The primary reason you go to school is to gain knowledge. Grades are simply a tool used by the educators to assess your grasp of what they are teaching. Contrary to their purpose the grades, degrees and diplomas seem to be seen by students as some magic stamp. They are trying to achieve the reverse of cause and effect. The students and parents want the effect which is the good grade and what that can mean for their life and careers, without enacting the cause which is learning the subject.

My brother teaches writing at Temple University and he’ll occasionally share the excuses and pleading that he receives from students and astoundingly, from their parents. He once had a students father ask him for a better grade, offering no valid reasons only the fact that she needed it. I would never have been able to ask my parents to plead for charity from a teacher. Had I tried my father would have given me hell and refused.

I always saw the line at the teacher after a grade was returned going to beg for points as an insane waste of time. Getting good grades was easy. I was there to learn, and they measured my knowledge of the subject matter to give me a grade. It all worked out really well.

The only time I remember going to the teacher after a test (not after it was graded) was when I found part of the test unfair. The mid-term had a question worth 40% of the grade on the test. The point tested by the question was covered, but only in two or three paragraphs out of many chapters in the reading. It was never addressed in the lectures or homework problems. I thought the proportion of the grade it represented was unjust. The point was not essential to the overall understanding of the course, but could represent a whole letter grade overall.

I went to explain my concern and was greeted with condescension and derision, possibly justified, as there was a group there to complain and, I assume, beg for a better grade a priori. He told me, “I’m sorry you didn’t do well on the exam but I will not change it.” I made an enemy for life when I told him, “I’m sure I got an A on the exam, I just thought the weight of that question was unfair.” He then confirmed my name. I was not worried because I was not making an idle boast. I got a 96/100. He never liked me much after that which I had a hard time understanding. As I clearly met his criteria and respectfully was raising a valid point.

I didn’t like him much after that either, because I saw him as a small person trying to prove his superior knowledge by slipping unfair questions into a mid-term. His superior knowledge was already acknowledged, why else would I listen to his lectures? He of course was abusing the idea behind grades as well, using them as a false measure of self-worth.

But although I judged him dishonest he was not overtly malicious and continued to give worthwhile lectures, which I continued to attend. I was there to learn, not to achieve friendships with professors or even letter grades. Those things were valuable, but secondary. So the point is, remember your purpose in school or in sending your children to school.

You send your children to school to learn, so help them learn. Help them to understand cause and effect. Don’t cripple them by teaching them how to appeal to pity for better letter grades. They’ll just end up not understanding the words “former” and “latter” in a college classroom somewhere.

And to reiterate what I took as Diana’s point, if they are not able to learn because the school is not able to teach. Hold the teachers accountable. And attack everything that makes any incompetence on their part acceptable.

Ari Armstrong is planning a demonstration that it is possible to eat a healthy diet on a food stamp budget. Low-Carb Diet, Food Stamp Budget. He is doing this not only to show that increases in the food stamp program are unnecessary, but in full protest of the entire program.

This not only protests the evil of redistribution of wealth, but will prove useful to those who think are honestly trying to eat a healthy diet on the smallest imaginable budget. I look forward to tracking his choices closely as I could use some inexpensive ideas.

As a side note tomorrow will be a full month since I committed to greatly reducing refined carbs in my diet and I have lost 11 lbs. This is with never finishing a mealy hungry and with my only extra exercise being a few lunch time walks, going to the gym one time and some snow shoveling.

Chart showing loss of 11 lbs in just under a month.

Apparently my feed has been broken since Sometime in November. At that time I upgraded wordpress, and possibly related was the merging of FeedBurner and Google. Anyway It should be working now. So for the 3 or 4 people who follow the feed, you will be delighted to know that I have been making an effort to add content regularly. And strangely you have a little bit of catching up to do. Unless you follow my tweets, then you probably already read all the posts.

I’ve received word of a promising new blog focused on economics from an Objectivist point of view called Simply Capitalism. It could prove a nice counterpoint of reason to the cacophony of shrill demands for increasing governmental control in our economic lives. Subscribe to their RSS feed and see for yourself.

Just a few quick opportunities to comment or send letters letting the newspapers know that even though they praise all the early work of the new administration, it still comes down to destruction of wealth regardless of their wishing or the fact that it was done by their favorite pragmatic politician versus the previous bunch of pragmatic politicians.

The newspapers seem to have an answer to the statement, “Bush had a stimulus and a bailout package and they aren’t working.” Their answer is, sure he handed out money, but there was no oversight, no federal controls on the recipients of the money. First this is false, there were controls. Second, and most importantly, government controls and regulations and other meddling with the economy are the primary cause of this mess. So their idea is that to make the economy work we must become more efficient at destroying wealth.

Here are a couple Inquirer and Daily News stories that are praising the destruction of wealth and productivity as good things:

• Will billions fix what ails us?
• Editorial: Greenhouse Gas Emissions

We are setting up for a perfect storm. Inflationary policies caused the dot-com bubble, the solution was of course to redouble the easy money policies to get out of the emergency which has caused the housing bubble. The solution to this is now apparently to deal with the emergency by looting even more money to spread around and solve the problem. Combine this with the arbitrary assertion of global warming, or climate change if you prefer, and the government will not only steal every dollar produced by our businesses but also make it illegal for them to produce because it is allegedly destroying the planet.

The answers are not hard to come by, just apparently hard to accept. The government exists to protect individual rights, and that is it. When it tries to cure any, let alone every, social and economic problem it necessarily violates some peoples rights in favor of others.