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Notes -
Maybe better suited to a Wellness Wednesday post, but I think there's a significant culture war angle here too.
To what extent is the current competency crisis in government, academia, etc. caused by an inability to spend time by oneself and actually put in the work? I've lamented in the past the decline in the social landscape, at least in the United States, but among the social environments that I have been finding recently in Baltimore, there seems to be almost a pathological fear of spending time alone in order to put in the work to actually improve at the thing that we're supposed to be doing together. For example, I've recently been going to a Spanish Happy Hour group at a brewery Thursday evenings after work. There are usually at least a few native speakers there, but aside from them, most people are at a quite elementary stage with the language, and aren't doing anything outside of the happy hour to improve. For some people this makes sense: they're mainly there to socialize not to learn, but for others, like the guy who organizes the group (Alex), the lack of progress is baffling to me. Alex started the group to improve his Spanish so he could communicate better with his girlfriend's family. And yet he seems unable to find the time to practice outside of happy hour (with reading/TV/shows/flashcards). I see the same thing with my new roommate, who is absolutely in love with the country and culture of Spain, and goes to happy hour with me, but won't put in the solitary effort to actually improve at the language. I see the same thing with running: people only going to run clubs to socialize and then expecting to run fast when they don't put in outside mileage on their own time, and even within the philosophy book club that I run where people seem unable to do the 30 pages of reading we discuss every other week.
I see this with myself as well, especially in my PhD. I know what I need to do to be successful: read the papers and do the experiments I have planned, but instead I find myself goofing off with labmates, texting/calling friends while I do busywork, or on this forum posting. Phones may have isolated in some ways, but at the same time, the current media environment seems to have created a constant yearning for companionship that I don't think is conducive to actually growing in competence and skill in areas outside of socialization.
People are tired. The idea that one can put in endless effort for as long as one is awake is an idea that I slowly grew out of in my twenties. There are a few people who seem to be able to do it but I don’t think they’re physiologically or psychologically normal. The rest of us just about get by at our job and then are mostly pooped and have to slip in bits and pieces of effort where they can.
Now, I think that modern media hasn’t helped with this. I’m playing Elden Ring at the moment and I’ve noticed that it can pretty much perk me up even when I’m basically dozing off, which of course means that it’s overdrawing my reserves when I really ought to be resting. It’s also harder to focus on semi-interesting skills when very-entertaining stuff is available instead, but everyone knows that already.
The "Attention Economy" is just BRUTAL, b/c it really is an utterly zero-sum game (you can't produce 'more attention' very easily, only reapportion the amount that currently exists), and thus there is strong incentive to try to drag attention out of people even when it is objectively unhealthy.
"Of course I can watch one more episode, Netflix, how thoughtful of you to queue it right up!" (looks up 3 episodes later to see the clock says "1:38 a.m.")
No, fuck off. Give me the app that values my attention approximately as much as I do, and will actively start discouraging me from expending it too much in one place. "Here, you have time for precisely one (1) episode of Tulsa King, then we're cutting you off. I've already set the lights in the room to dim slowly, and your favorite ambient sleep noises are cued up as soon as you get into the bed."
I've heard from anonymous sources that there's a whole service economy for the ultrarich, based around this sort of thing. The basic idea is that their time is very valuable, so they'll pay astronomical prices to avoid ever having to wait or be distracted by petty bullshit. The extreme example might be having a private jet/helicopter to help them travel faster, but it exists for all sorts of minor things too. So they might have a personal assistant who's job is to cue up just one episode of their favorite TV show, then slowly turn down the lights and help them sleep. or whatever else they want.
Obviously some of that is a privilege that only the very wealthy can afford. But it does seem like, to some extent, we should be able to pay for services that help middle class folks do that too. it's odd that we can't. If anything, it seems to be going the opposite direction, where like, even if you pay for premium, it will still insist on showing us adds and doing that sort of attention-grabbing addictive bullshit. It feels like I'm going to a restaurant and the owner is telling us "yeah I don't care how much you pay, you must sit in the smoking section and smoke at least one cigarette. i'm not letting you enjoy my food without a little nicotine on the side."
Yeah, I'm desperately curious as to the sorts of lifestyle accommodations one unlocks when they pass, at a guess, the $50 million net worth mark.
For me, yeah, I think if I could have a dedicated personal assistant, which I'd guess would cost $50k-70k/year for a decently competent one (just googled it, I was almost exactly right), I could cut out SO MUCH CRAP that wastes my time and focus on the highest leverage, most productive, or fun, stuff that I WANT to be doing.
But man, how do you get to the level of wealth quickly if you're merely climbing the corporate ladder? If I start pulling down $250k/yr then it might start to be justifiable (in my mind) to splurge on a dedicated assistant to handle this stuff. And have to try to avoid lifestyle inflation to some degree. But BECAUSE I currently complete many of those tasks myself, I'm somewhat stymied from doing the work that might speed up my progression to higher incomes.
There's got to be an efficient frontier on the curve that I'm not quite hitting. Hmmm.
Wait wait wait, I just realized, under idealized circumstances that approximately what a spouse can help achieve, if you marry well and have a good, cooperative, teammate relationship. That was probably the secret for middle class couples leveraging into higher income brackets.
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