On testability, Set, and the most valuable resource in the universe

2021, Week 3 Musings

Time management: I’m starting to feel the grueling weight of an idea I believe strongly in, that human attention is the most valuable resource in the universe. I think this principle is useful in general, as a reminder of how we should design a variety of social systems, but taken at the level of personal time management, I’m starting to have to confront the difficult trade-offs I’ve often been too immature to make.

For one thing, as is probably obvious to anybody who knows me, I’m perpetually working on too many things at once, and while I’ve somehow been able to manage that pretty fine without things crashing and burning for half my life, I’m now realizing that there’s a difference between that approach working as a student, when the “cost” of not getting that balance right is probably just your grade in that one least important class, vs. as a professional, when the “cost” is instead borne by many people besides yourself. On any given day right now, I’m switching frantically back and forth between supporting students working on local urban projects, supporting the community partners who are working with the students, supporting our COVID-19 response partners in the Bay Area, supporting my climate research team, supporting other Stanford affiliates on strategic projects, and supporting my nonprofit project partners and clients — and there’s literally no longer enough time in a week to make progress on all these fronts together. I’m the…