#radioactivespreadsheet

Thanks!

Hahaha I hope you know the answer to this question already, Frank.

My answer is: you always do all three. If you don't, you must do all three.

The reason is this:

The universe is filled with many, many important things.

Chores.

(No, I'm not only talking about housework, I'm talking about all the stuff that is 'important' and, hence, potentially important to the flow of time.)

When you do "work" in a career, as a job, then you make use of machinery (machinimism) that in general is a lot more efficient than human hand work.

So, it is impossible to be careful in the work you do. If you try, then your efforts won't be as efficient on the "time scale" over which you can control them.

Hm. Imagine, though, that you do try to be careful, and you do try to be as efficient as possible. As you work more, are you getting better and better at it?

If so, you're a very good kind of robot. A "roboteer."

If not, you're an underachiever.

A human being isn't a perfect automaton, using over 50% of their talent. If you don't aim to become a perfect automaton, then you experience Practical Mathematics Piety. You'll try to be the best you can be, and you won't care as much about the progress you make.

If you try hard, you will make progress. Level up. Spend several hours poring over a really complicated situation in a way you never had before, and you'll make progress.

So the correct way to process data, the "rationalist approach" (I ought to rewrite it, I dreamed it up but I can't bear to let it lie dead and abandoned), is to never, under any circumstances, lose track of the big picture. Some people have found it useful to refer to this as 'the Hydrogen Moment'.

Outside, a lot of people are already very good at this, and it generally feels good. In a world without structure and order, it should feel good.