Questions I often ask myself

Posted: - Modified: | reflection

Chenny asked me what kinds of things I'm concerned about, so I started reflecting on the kinds of questions I usually ask myself. Here's a rough list with some examples:

  • What could make things a little bit better? How can I compound those improvements? A few notes on kaizen
  • Which trade-offs might be worth it? Which ones do I decide against? How can I experiment?
  • What do I want from this stage? What has changed? How can I make the most of that? What's coming up next? ,
  • What could awesome look like? How can I tell if I'm on the right track? How far do I want to go? Example, other posts
  • What might failure look like? What are the warning signs? Example: Experiment pre-mortem, Update
  • What are the risks and downsides? How can I mitigate them?
  • How can I make things easier for future me?
  • How can I test and work around my current limits? Ex: squirrel brain
  • What do I want to remember, reflect on, and share?
  • What do my decisions tell me about my values? Do I agree? Do I want to change things?
  • What are the results of past decisions and experiments? What can I learn from those? A few notes on decisions
  • How do I want to grow?
  • What do I want to learn? How can I learn it? What do I know now?
  • How can I get better at seeing, noticing, asking, reflecting, organizing, sharing, improving?
  • Where can I take advantage of leverage or comparative advantage? Where is it good to not optimize along obvious dimensions?
  • What would I do if I were starting from scratch? Which sunk costs should I ignore?
  • What can I break down, connect, or transform?
  • How am I different from alternate universe mes? How can I make the most of that? Example
  • What happens if I look closely at my discomfort or fear? Where am I shying away from something, and why? Example: uncertainty, working on my own things, the experiment
  • Where does it make sense to take on more difficulty or do things worse so that I can do things even better later on?
  • What have I forgotten or neglected? What do I want to reclaim, and what do I want to let go? Some thoughts
  • What do I not know to look for? How can I bump into stuff like that?

At the moment, I'm focused on time and attention. I think about what's worth giving up sleep for, and how sleeping more might help with some things like thinking. I think about time with W- and A-. I think about week-to-week changes and how I can adapt. I think about how we can use little bits of time to improve things in order to more effectively use time. There's definitely a lot to figure out!

You can comment with Disqus or you can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.