Focus

Is soooooooooooo important. It is so so so freaking important. I realized that yesterday, while in a 2:45-hour long meeting.

People involved in high-dimensional thought, such as machine learners, physicists, mathematicians, or logistic planners, might be most easily apt to understand the analogy I'm about to indulge in.

Each of us has a certain amount of "power rate", equivalent to wattage, that we can generate while we perform tasks. This

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This power rate can be thought of as the "effort" or "attention" that we have available to apply onto anything we choose, whether this is

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This power rate can be thought of as the "effort" or "attention" that we have available to apply onto anything we choose, such as cooking, eating, showering, having a conversation, walking, coding, writing emails, working, or jumping. Each and every task requires some level of effort, and to fulfill the task, we must apply this effort ourselves. Somehow, we must act to get things done. And into this we apply our power.

The amount of power one exerts at any given time can vary, but logic indicates that it should be finite, for otherwise we would find someone doing everything at the same time. (It could also be the case that an infinite power might be applied to a task for which infinite effort is required (unachievable), but I will not delve into this case). What we do at each point in time, then, is to decide what to apply our power into. What can we apply it to? How many different tasks can we start or continue at any given time? For practical matters, there are an infinity of directions towards which to apply our effort. Just imagine every possible thing you can think, every possible train of thought - now imagine every possible thing you can say, every possible sound, or even coherent sentence, you can utter - and now imagine every possible movement you can make, in any direction given to you by the space around you, and any action you can take, whether it is to continue to read this entry or to do what you were doing before, or ANYTHING ELSE. Now combine all of these... take all possible combinations, and now imagine this vast space of possibilities compounded with the dimension of time - you can think and say and do - you can CREATE any combination of any of the specific instances you just imagined. And more! It is a vast, ultra-high dimensional space. The possibilities are beyond staggering. But they always are, whether you think of them or not. (Being aware of them grants you more control over them, though).

Imagine if you were constantly aware of all of these possibilities. Which one would you choose? Why? It would be quite a task in itself, just to choose which one of these possibilities to venture into. The average person however, will be aware, and care, only about a tiny, tiny, subset of this huge space - about the things closest to him in location, in time, the most influential concepts on his current train of thought and action - his context. The nature of nature helps us in this way, and allows us to traverse the space of possibilities in a smooth and gradual fashion, therefore reducing the vast combinatorial space of possibilities into a "cone" in space, time, and other more subtle dimensions (work priorities, social interactions), much more easily conceived by our minds.

But even in our contexts, the space of things we can do is still vast. The range of values in each dimension is much diminished - only close proximity and influence is of importance, only people whom which we are currently interacting matter, only activities we have already learned and are currently involved in play meaningful roles. But the number of dimensions has barely decreased, if at all. We can still move in any direction, speak an immense amount of different possible expressions relating to what we are doing, and act in many different ways (for anyone who has played Mass Effect or any similar RPG, you can see what I mean). So what happens if we attempt to exert our power into several different possibilities at once? In all dimensions? Our efforts become weak. They will attempt all and achieve none, like the guy who tries to catch two rabbits at once. The amount of space our energy attempts to cover is exponentially large with the number of dimensions we deal with, and you know how a sequential covering of this space (which is similar to what is attempted in this case) is practically no good.

To remove some abstractness, I'll exemplify with the meeting I was in when I first began writing this entry. During this meeting, 6 or 7 people were trying to come up with an effective design for an application that would serve as a disaster response system for an operator. I was only an additive who mostly helped the main developer understand the basics and the quirks of GWT, but I was included in the meeting because... I was somehow involved.

As the meeting progressed, it was obvious that almost no one knew what we were aiming towards. Some people had a semi-defined concept of the required functionality, and some people were just there expecting others to have a clear idea. The developers expected the project leads to tell them exactly what to do, and the project leads expected the developers to have a clear idea of what they should be doing, because they had had more hands-on experience with the project. Almost 3 hours later, it was decided that a couple of buttons should switch places and change colors, the timer should change its display style to make it seem more obvious to the user, and the time, more than the tasks achieved during the meeting, ensued a vague, uneasy conclusion.

During this meeting, I could not help but think of the concept I'm trying to describe. I could see many people had the correct intentions - they wanted to settle on the important parts of the project and move along with it. But no one had a concrete idea on how to do it - we were all just grasping and grabbing in the dark, looking for the ideal design, but not even knowing what it should be like or what it should do. We were lost. (Meetings in general tend to be this way, mostly because everyone expects everyone else to do the work, but that's another story). But any developer with any experience knows that, if the goal is precise and well-known in one's mind, the work itself is fast, efficient, and even enjoyable. If one know what one aims for, if one's mind is clear, the result is vastly different.

And this concept can apply to any person at any given time. If one is not focused on a task, it is very easy to get distracted by our environment or by our very minds, and frequently switch mindsets, effectively going about on a random walk, rarely achieving anything, never too far from the point of departure.

Example:

I see it this way - if one is unfocused, one exerts energy like a candle, in all directions at once. It will be very hard to light up and to recognize the objective. Though one might, eventually. But if one knows where one's going, energy is exerted like a laser, and it is much easier to light up and achieve the task that one's going for. Kinda sensible analogy.

*UPDATE: Just ignore this last paragraph :P*