<aside> 💡 This was written in a conversational memo for a friend, but pulled out to fit standalone here. We were talking through the right combination of “learning” and “doing” in life, and I had been in a fairly intense “learning” period without much “doing”.

</aside>

Learning is like leveling up. But, I can’t spend all of my time leveling up my character — at some point I have to go on raids or whatever (I’m clearly not a WoW guy), or else why am I spending time leveling up? If my goal is to accomplish to most toward my direction of “progress” (though the direction here is still subject to change), there is a theoretical optimization point between maxing character stats and actually doing things.

To show you how I’m thinking about it, let’s play a turn-based board game in the Dune-verse (since I’m waiting for Dune II to come out). I’m stuck in an infinite 2D desert (representing all of the end states I could end up in my life), trying to get as north as possible, where north is the optimal direction for accomplishing the most “progress” (you can even put your own definition of progress in here!).

Each turn, I can either:

1. Increase my speed stat (aka have deep conversations with people, learn about new topics, improve myself, etc). This allows me to make progress faster when I want to.
2. Improve my direction. I don’t actually know where true north is (no paracompass), so spending a turn adjusting a little and hopefully pointing a little more northward can help a lot over time. This is basically revisiting goals, fundamentals, and philosophies. May require an astronomical sampling at nights.
3. Sandwalk forward toward the direction I’m pointing, with a given speed. By investing in #1, I can increase this speed. This is the actual act of doing work, getting things done, etc.

With these rules set out, it becomes pretty clear that there’s an optimal combination of all three actions if you want to maximize how far north you get. Unfortunately I have no analogy for the sandworms yet.