Contemplating the phenomenon of clutter from a data/information perspective. Begin with the common refrain "I have nothing to wear/read/do."
It's interesting how easily that slips off the tongue when we know that we DO have clothes, books, tasks. What's actually going on?
Hypothesis: If we have only a vague sense of what we want + a set of objects w/ unclear utility-values, the mind thinks "no solution exists"
It's really "no immediate, obvious solution exists". Problem is worsened by urgency– no time for wardrobe review an hour before a date, etc.
All of this demonstrates the virtue of review. Revisit your bookshelf, movie list, warddrobe and to-do list periodically, AND your own wants
I've felt bored, frustrated, even guilty when staring at my bookshelf because Visa-06 collected books Visa-15 isn't interested in any more.
Also, the creeping nature of clutter is incredibly costly. Once clutter covers a "surface", everything underneath loses its utility-value
Some nice replies sharing frustration at losing interest in once-loved things. My favorite solution is to "compress and remix". Takes effort
What does that mean though? If you've written 10,000 words, compress/reinterpret them into 1,000. It's hard and you'll lose stuff but...
Ideally it'll be "generative". Keep the motif, ditch the orchestration. You'll be able to recreate the latter in your mind w/ the former cue
That's a whole other related/interesting train of thought. Use the story to derive the moral, use the moral to generate the story (+more!)
The interesting thing is that you can't truly understand the moral until you first grasp the story. The map cannot replace the territory.
Abt 5 yrs ago I used to geek out about the idea of complex systems and how everything is interconnected. Now it's self-evident, non-issue
Lesson there is: Don't feel bad abt losing interest in things you used to love. Often means you've internalized it and are ready to move fwd
Once you've got the message, hang up the phone. Once the travelling salesman finds his optimal path, he locks it in. Moves on to next thing.
I'm starting to foresee this with @1000wordvomits. 500k words of reflection will probably be summarized in a few sentences. I look fwd to it
Because I think then I'll have clarity to a degree I would not have if I started w/ the final sentences. The moral cannot replace the story.
Which amusingly reminds me of an idea from Tor Norretrander's The User Illusion: quality can be inferred from quantity of work DISCARDED
This may not have always been true in the past, but it is prbly true for the age of info-abundance. Time (and discarded work) will tell.
