Given that life is short, relentlessly prune bullshit. That's a paraphrased version of Paul Graham's advice found in this essay, 'Life Is Short'.
I think I understand the advice. It applies to all kinds of activities. Writing (or proofreading) is an obvious one. Get all the ideas into a rough draft, toss the extra stuff aside, and the final draft is what's left.
Marie Kondo's tidying advice takes a similar approach. Look over all your things, at once, then throw out everything you don't need. What's left is tidiness.
Relentlessly prune bullshit- again, I think I got it. But, just to make sure, I decided to do one last comprehension check. My favorite economics professor used to tell us that he knew students understood a concept once they were able to 'explain the opposite' (1).
'Pruning bullshit' implies whittling out the unnecessary after getting every possible idea onto paper. So, the opposite must mean taking a final draft and expanding it with every possible unnecessary extension of the idea.
Here's the example I went through the other day.
First, I found a quote that I thought was pretty good:
"If you cannot waste hours, you will waste years."
Then, I applied the opposite:
"Planning is the key. Fail to plan and you plan to fail. But planning takes time. So if you cannot waste seconds to plan, you will waste minutes executing. If you cannot waste minutes, you will waste hours. If you cannot waste hours, you will waste days. If you cannot waste days, you will waste weeks. If you cannot waste weeks, you will waste months. If you cannot waste months, you will waste years. If you cannot waste years, you will waste your life."
Next Wednesday, I'll explain in more detail what I learned from the exercise and how I've applied it to my writing.
Thanks for reading. See you all again on Sunday.
Tim
Footnotes / imagine complaints
1. Explain the opposite? Explain!
Economics lends itself to this idea better than most subjects. If a student could explain what a tax increase would do to national output, the opposite meant explaining the implications of a tax decrease.
