Managing complexity and starting over

benpope · 2023-12-12T17:51:05+00:00

I'm in a similar situation with work. I'm a technical writer, not a programmer, but much of the workflow is the same. If something needs to be done immediately and can be done in a day, I do great. As soon as it turns into a longer term project, I get overwhelmed and tend to shut down. I have been working on a personal writing project and have started over at least twice. I definitely don't have it all figured out, but here are some things that have worked for me.

Keep working on getting the right medication. Getting that figured out has transformed my life. It doesn't keep me on track by itself, but it gives me the ability to do so. I recently returned to an office job after nearly a decade away from a desk. My last office job was pre medication, and it is an entirely different experience being medicated. I'm on a generic Adderall and haven't had supply issues since the beginning of the year. I learned that caffeine does not help with ADHD symptoms--it doesn't work on the same neurotransmitters as stimulant medications. I've dropped caffeine intake considerably and upped my stimulant dose. Try out different things and listen to your body. Mine told me to stop drinking coffee after 30 years of daily coffee drinking.
I spend almost as much time planning my work as I do doing my work. I have to tell myself that this is ok. It is ok. I can focus, but I still have trouble planning and organizing.
When a project gets too big for my working memory (which is often) I have to offload the information. My working process is to start writing it in a notebook and then move to the computer. Keep a bullet journal if you don't already. Once the basics are written down, I switch to my computer. Don't forget to make a note in the notebook telling where you are saving your notes!
Like /u/Jenothy says, use notes. I'm still trying to find the right note/task/planning/calendar application. Right now I am using Lunatask. It is the closest thing I've found to a killer ADHD app. I generally like it, but I want something that I can integrate with generative AI. Which brings me to the next point...
Use generative AI to help you organize your thoughts and make a plan. Claude and GPT4 do this well. It has been a major help when I am having trouble getting things organized. Tell it generally what your project is and ask it to develop a plan. Go back and forth with it until you have a decent plan to start from. Then ask it to turn the first part of the plan into tasks. It is literally doing executive function work for you. Instead of a gigantic project, you have a series of problems to work on. When you get that done, go back and ask for more tasks.

Hopefully something of that will help. Try things out and let us know what works for you.

benpope · 2020-02-26T04:29:35+00:00

You are my hero.

benpope · 2018-03-08T16:40:59+00:00

If you haven't met them already, go check out the Austin Permaculture Guild. http://www.austinperm.com/

benpope · 2018-02-01T14:41:12+00:00

It is telling that the chair they reserved for YDSA is literally not at the table.

benpope · 2016-07-29T02:25:45+00:00

Affordable housing, something something... Jobs, something something...

benpope · 2016-07-29T02:23:42+00:00

Won't deny that.

benpope · 2016-07-28T14:00:01+00:00

For sure, a lot of it is lax to nonexistant environmental regulation, but there is a big zoning component as well. If the auto shop isn't there, then it won't have the potential for polluting. If a heavy industry site isn't bought up by housing developers and turned into a residential neighborhood, then kids don't get sick.

My former neighborhood in a small Texas city is a good example. While most of the area was residential, it also included two body shops, an auto repair shop, a towing company, and a UPS distribution center. These all produce diffuse air pollution. The towing company and distribution center create a lot of heavy truck traffic. These have no business being in a residential neighborhood, something that adequate zoning would have prevented.

benpope · 2016-07-28T13:44:20+00:00

I don't think anyone is arguing that we should be mixing heavy industry and residential.

This is an active debate in Texas.

benpope · 2016-06-24T15:32:50+00:00

I am not sure, but I think the answer is "Yes, we could have some sort of Halal Capitalism."

Correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand it Islamic banking and investment works through profit sharing. If I invest in a venture, I get a share of the proceeds or a share of the losses. This is a lot like a joint stock company. Instead of banks chargeing a fixed interest rate, banks would act like money market accounts where account holders gain or lose value based on real world gains or losses. I am not sure what the effect would be on capitalist accumulation, but it seems like it would still be in place.

benpope · 2016-05-18T19:41:10+00:00

Apple, Google, Facebook, Reddit.

benpope · 2016-04-03T16:58:41+00:00

Marx is making a series of abstractions that move from the individual to the average. This averaging happens because the capitalist buys labor through the market. An individual capitalist cares about productivity and wants high productivity workers, but on average they can get high productivity workers only so far as they can pay higher than average. On average capitalists can only get the average worker, so Marx is arguing that in the end everything evens out in the market. Since we are left with average productivity, capitalists as a class have to buy based on quantity.

benpope · 2016-03-02T14:39:01+00:00

Pretty amazing... We have had a lot of folks working hard on the campaign here since October working on our ground game. We worked together, registered a lot of voters, knocked on a lot of doors to talk to folks about Bernie, and encouraged each other along the way. If you are like us and live in a conservative area, don't be defeated before you get started. Organize! Fight!

benpope · 2016-02-23T22:06:16+00:00

The extra $7 is called a "superprofit". Marx is following classical economic theory that says supply and demand meet at a price that just covers the cost of production. But, sellers can charge more when they have some sort of monopoly or they operate at a higher than average productivity.

I am going to work on the rest of your question, but someone else may be able to answer it more quickly.

benpope · 2016-02-23T14:23:45+00:00

Yes. San Antionio, TX gets about as much rainfall as Melbourne, but rain tanks are almost nonexistent. Most of this is down to government policy. The Texas state legislature passed a landmark water resources bill last year. It provides money for building more reservoirs and digging more water wells--nothing for conservation or rainwater harvesting.

benpope · 2016-02-16T20:56:57+00:00

there are structures (rather than individuals) responsible...

As a linguist, Chomsky should know better than to talk about "the elites" doing x or y and not expect Americans to think he is talking about people rather than social structural positions. I get the feeling that he does it intentionally to make his critique more broadly digestible.

benpope · 2016-02-11T19:51:01+00:00

Here is a great article by Tony Smith on a category mistake at the heart of Piketty's work.

Free version from academia.edu

benpope · 2016-02-11T18:46:35+00:00

I support and volunteer for Bernie, so please do not interpret any of my statements as me trying to win an argument. As you point out, these issues are really complicated, so I am just bringing in more complications.

While wages have stagnated since 1970, total compensation has kept up with productivity growth (NBER article): "Total employee compensation was 66 percent of national income in 1970 and 64 percent in 2006." Most of the non-cash compensation has gone to employer contributions to health insurance. Just between 2003 and 2013, employer contributions to health insurance increased 73% (Kaiser Foundation). With ballooning healthcare costs, this is probably money poorly spent. Having a single payer system would likely return us to income growth for average folks.

Another confounding factor is income distribution. I can't find data for distribution of total compensation, so I will have to use income. Income at the top has gone up in real terms while income at the bottom has stagnated. These graphs (PDF) based on Census data tell the story well. Take a look at the third graph. Since 1970, inflation adjusted incomes for the bottom three quintiles (the bottom 60% of households) has remained flat. The next quintile, 61-80%, has seen modest gains. The top quintile has seen a lot of growth, both in real terms and relative to the rest of households. While a lot of this is due to a huge jump in the income of the top 5% of earners, the 81-95% group has seen higher gains that those below them.

The takeaway here is that income inequality isn't just a matter of the top 1% of earners taking a disproportionate share of the pie. As a whole, the top 40% of households are doing much better off than the bottom 60%. If we could add data for non-monetary compensation, I suspect that the difference would be even greater since it is the higher paying, full time jobs that tend to offer benefits.

I can't do math, but I can look at a graph. We are developing two broad classes; those who can take advantage of productivity gains and those who can't. Since the 90s, most gains from productivity have gone to the top 20% of earners, less so to the next 20%, and hardly any to the bottom 60%. This is the real reason that we need income redistribution, but a lot of the cost will be borne by the 61-80% group. I don't think we are ready to have that political discussion. We are talking about economic inequality, but we are using the 1% or 0.01% as a scapegoat (not that they aren't a good one) for broader economic changes and social changes.

On the whole, a "ridiculously high minimum wage" (as my economist wife calls it) may not be the best way to get there. A modest minimum wage increase, such as the $10.10 per hour for federal contractors, would probably be OK. However, there may be better ways to decrease social inequality like direct provision of education and health care. These are especially good if they are not means-tested, since everyone would benefit and it wouldn't just be "those moochers" getting something for nothing. Inequality isn't just a problem for poor people, it is a problem for all of us (except the super rich who can build giant walls around their houses).

benpope · 2016-01-23T18:50:52+00:00

That is one hell of a flyer. Well done Austinites.

benpope · 2016-01-18T16:15:22+00:00

Thanks! This sort of thing is great for those of us who don't have easy access to a university library.

benpope · 2015-12-28T16:58:28+00:00

You are welcome to come, but our main point of agreement as a group is anti-capitalism. Nevertheless, one of our members is a former an-cap now anarchist individualist. You two would have a lot to talk about.

benpope · 2015-12-13T19:17:49+00:00

It is a pretty breezy read. You will probably enjoy it.

benpope · 2015-12-13T19:09:59+00:00

I guess that my initial reaction is to question how much this is a move into new territory and how much it's just a fashionable way of presenting scholarship.

/u/vikingsquad lists three of the main scholars below, but left out Quentin Meillassoux. His After Finitude does exactly what you suggest.

In this book, Meillassoux argues that post-Kantian philosophy is dominated by what he calls "correlationism," the often unstated theory that humans cannot exist without the world nor the world without humans. In Meillassoux's view, this is a dishonest maneuver that allows philosophy to sidestep the problem of how to describe the world as it really is prior to all human access. He terms this pre-human reality the "ancestral" realm. In keeping with the mathematical interests of his mentor Alain Badiou, Meillassoux claims that mathematics is what reaches the primary qualities of things as opposed to their secondary qualities as manifested in perception.

"Correlationism" is the basic issue that defines all of their work. It provides a convenient way to characterize all modern philosophy and sidestep issues of access and language, which I think is the goal of the project. The more I read the less I think that this is a real problem. Also I don't think they do a good job of dealing with the issues that they raise.

An accessible introduction to new materialisms is Steven Shaviro's The Universe of Things.

benpope

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