How to balance constraints

Remove a constraint here, and a new one is created there.

• We want to wake up earlier to run, but now we have less time to sleep.
• We want to work until later but don't make it in time for dinner with family.
• We want more time for our hobbies, but it takes time away from our loved ones.

These trade-offs apply to our time, attention, energy, money, emotional investment, work focus, etc.

We need to design our constraints to balance them successfully.

Carefully designed constraints

"When will I study deep learning?"

I wanted to make time to study AI, but there was none: all of my time was already spoken for.

I wanted to study an extra 1 hour/day. The candidates were the activities I did every day:

• Replace my morning run
• Replace my writing
• Work 1 fewer hour
• Replace my evening strength training and jiujitsu
• Replace 1 hour of my evening book reading time

That was it: To add something, I had to remove something.

I experimented with replacing my morning run for a couple of weeks. Two weeks later, I regretted it: I didn't feel as energized throughout the day and struggled to focus on studying first thing in the morning.

I then experimented with replacing 1 hour of my book reading, which worked nicely. It was hard to study an extra hour on top of my reading before, and this way I kept my exercise routines, health, and energy.

But of course, I'm reading fewer books now. I have to read fewer books to focus on deep learning.

Entangled in a web of constraints

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities.

Mckeown, Greg . Essentialism (p. 16). Crown. Kindle Edition.

It's common today to feel like we're being pulled in several different directions.

Today we also have choice. Almost every individual constraint can be changed and removed if only we didn't care for its side effects.

Except we do.

Our constraints are entangled in the "web of constraints" of all our other priorities, intertwining our limitations.

Like a Rubik's cube where clearing a face resets another, we change a constraint to match our needs, only for another constraint to become the new problem.

So how do we decide which constraints to change, and how should we change them?

Create back pressure through constraints

Creating and changing constraints is an important way to achieve results.

Because today we have choice, it's tempting, but ineffective, to only remove constraints when they are impeding our progress.

Examples of this ineffective thinking:

• I want to study for this topic, so I'll just study anywhere and anytime so I can study as much as possible.
• I want to exercise every day, so I'll get a gym membership in which I can go to the gym anytime in the day.
• I want to get this work right, so I'll work on it for as long as I want to – it's done when it's done.
• I just want to relax and be happy, so I'll just do whatever I want, whenever I want.

That's the problem with choice: when we're able to do anything, we often don't do anything.

Barry Schwartz's book The Paradox of Choice is my favorite source for such examples. As he relates in the book:

Then, in 1999, psychologists Sheena Yiengar and Mark Lepper published an article that changed my life. The article, which I discuss in detail in the book, reported three studies, each of which showed that presenting people with a wide array of options doesn't liberate them: it paralyzes them.

Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice, Preface to 2nd Edition

Constraints can help us act.

Instead of an environment with no constraints where we can do anything we want, we should design an environment with constraints that exert back pressure that forces us to do what we want.

If I want to study something, instead of "I'll study anywhere and anytime I can," saying "8pm to 9pm is study time, and study time only" pressures me to focus on studying.

Because life is complex and we balance many responsibilities, constraints that exert back pressure allow us to do more of all we must do.

Holistic alignment of values

We want to avoid opposite values in our life, so we can design our constraints to serve our values holistically.

Examples of wrong, opposite values in life:

• I want to be healthy, but I want to eat whatever I want at any time
• I want to be good at this activity, but I hate practicing
• I want to have energy throughout the day, but I hate exercising and sleeping early
• I want to have more time for myself and my family, but I want to spend a lot of time on social media and the internet

When our values are opposites, it's hard to design our constraints towards our values because removing a constraint that hinders a particular value will then hinder a different value.

But when our values are aligned, it's easier to create a set of constraints that can support all of them holistically.

If you value exercising, being healthy, having energy throughout the day, and being well rested, you will create constraints that lead you to sleep early, to be up early and rested to exercise, to eat well to exercise well, and so on.

But if you also like staying up late to watch TV, eating snacks, using your phone in bed before sleeping, and sleeping in, those values will conflict with your other values, and everything will be impossible to balance.

No magic allows us to sleep all day and spend our free time on our phones but also to be incredibly healthy, energetic, and productive. We need to choose what we really value.

Once we choose only values that are well aligned, we can optimize our constraints for activities that nurture what we value to the detriment of what we don't.

Lollapalooza effects

Charles Munger calls the alignment of several factors towards an outstanding result the "Lollapalooza Effect."

When we design our constraints properly, constraints help us multiply the effect of our actions rather than constrain them.

Here's how Lollapalooza is defined in the book Charlie Munger's Almanack:

Lol-la-pa-loo-za: 1. Something outstanding of its kind. 2. As personified by Charles Munger, the critical mass obtained via a combination of concentration, curiosity, perseverance, and self-criticism, applied through a prism of multidisciplinary mental models.
[..]
When several models combine, you get lollapalooza effects; this is when two, three, or four forces are all operating in the same direction. And, frequently, you don't get simple addition. It's often like a critical mass in physics where you get a nuclear explosion if you get to a certain point of mass [..] – Outstanding Investor Digest, December 29, 1997

For example: if our health is best of class, we're constantly studying, and we're frequently making new connections and helping others, these will compound: our energy will help us study, our study will help us help others, helping others will give us energy, etc. – we create an effectiveness explosion.

Constraints are inevitable, but they're not all equal. Wisely choosing them allows us to compound the effect they cause, sometimes to outstanding results.

Experiment constraints design

Constraints are all entangled, interrelated. We can't just add or remove one in isolation.

Instead, we should consider how they relate and how we could modify and even add constraints to achieve the effects we want.

Because constraints can create back pressure, be aligned or not to our values, and generate Lollapalooza effects, clarifying what our constraints are and what they should be is essential to achieving what we aim towards in a complex world of several pursuits.

With these principles in mind, here are some suggestions for you to experiment with in your own life:

• How can you create a new constraint at work that will make you more effective in and out of work? e.g. starting work later to exercise or not checking emails until after meditation?
• How can you change a constraint in personal life that will improve that particular area and several others, e.g. exercising with a friend or writing down takeaways from a podcast after listening to it with at least one action item for you to do over the next 24 hours.
• How can you remove a constraint that will affect several parts of life at once e.g. Talk openly about your passion for spirituality at work, with friends, and with family, or be vulnerable and talk about both your work and personal difficulties with people at work and home.

Because constraints are intertwined, we can achieve outstanding results by deliberately creating, changing, and removing them as long as we think holistically about our values and the life we want.