your inhabited environment is an extension of your self; you store body parts in it, & embody them on-demand, to re-spec. are we not different machines when cooking, cleaning house, researching online, coding, etc? there is little differentiating not cleaning & not working out
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RT @provisionalidea
Yo so you know how a bunch of scientists and theorists have been saying for years that tools are an extension of the human body?
A n…
https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1392854515347513351
I get rather frustrated watching people do everyday tasks quite often, seeing all the little frictions in every movement, the paper cuts sapping their willpower & energy. so many ways to improve, if they'd only slow down & consider, but they've no time to write a shorter letter
sometimes I wonder if this is just a rather convoluted form of procrastination, but then I spend 10 minutes watching someone do a task which would have taken me 2, and am reassured it's not. small optimizations add up over time, compounding their time savings as your power grows
if you were a professional athlete, you'd hone your body, your tool, w/ much gusto; why do so many white-collar professionals neglect their mind?
if one were resource-constrained, this would be understandable, & indeed, free time is a resource; but I don't think this explains it
w/o real constraints, one often also lacks any real motivation; after all, why try hard if your life is simple, if you don't want for anything? you can just coast along, enjoying yourself
and indeed, this is a fine way to live; but it does seem to be missing something deeper
a life filled w/ physical pleasures & comfortable distractions is one unlikely to expose you to true beauty, to show you the raw edges of the universe, make you strive for truth. it's often some sort of trauma, a boundary experience, something missing in your heart that drives it
such an experience is a double-edged sword; it can open your mind to higher truth, but it also can make you dissatisfied w/ simple mundanity, which is not a tradeoff that should be taken lightly
I just really wish some of my coworkers would at least nibble on the forbidden fruit
I'm pretty neurotic about this sort of thing; it takes some effort for me to decide to do something, so I try to ensure that there is as little as possible standing in my way when motivation strikes. I relentlessly introspect my processes & micro-optimize the smallest aspect.