I’m re-reading this article to try thinking about my intuitions more.
I’m writing out some thoughts as I read the article:
I hadn’t been explicitly aware of the difference between projects and activities before reading this and I had forgotten the difference since reading it the first time. I think my projects (grammar projects) have been more like activities focused on immediate benefit with the hope for long-term benefit if I continue to work on grammar and then text analysis. I wanted the grammar stuff to be more like a project but I don’t seem able to follow through with that.
META-COMMENT: I’m having more feelings about the article while reading it with the idea to do some commentary. I think I normally read in a very passive and unfeeling way. I think I also like the article more because I’m trying to do something with the information in it.
I hadn’t considered much about how to communicate whether my activities were more for immediate benefit or long-term benefit. I think I try to aim for both because I don’t yet have the persistence to do projects with steps that don’t have much immediate benefit. Going forward my communication about my projects should probably highlight that I’m more activity oriented due to lack of skill.
They do want longer term goals, but they don’t want to commit to those goals and possibly fail. They act like they are doing autonomous, independent activities, but they are kinda hoping for a successful project. They want risk-free individual actions to add up to something great. That sort of behavior doesn’t work well for the person doing it and it’s hard for others to deal with.
I agree with this and think it applies to me. My intuition here is that I’m a bit anxious about making plans because of my follow through history. I like planning but I don’t like feeling like I have to stick to a plan. I like having multiple plans because I like flexibility because I can’t tell which plan will work out best for me.
Try to be more honest with yourself. Plan out some projects (start with small projects).
I would like to get back to doing the grammar project and move on to textual analysis. I still that that is a really great avenue for me to make actual progress in learning philosophy. My guess it that I have other projects with philosophy that I have not formulated explicitly. Maybe one project I have is to try to continue staying connected to critical fallibilism in some way. I tend to think that something is better than nothing and it’s better to try a little than not at all.
The more fundamental project that keeps me coming back to critical fallibilism might be something like: to try to continue to build up familiarity with the ideas and see how they relate to my thinking as time goes on. I have some awareness that this project would be better served by a much more systematic approach than semi-randomly reading articles and commenting on new articles.
Reading the project planning considerations section gave me a bit of anxiety. I get nervous involving other people in my plans in any way because I have a hard time with the pressure of feeling like I need to meet expectations. When I fail on my own, I feel less bad because I don’t like to drag anyone else down with me. Another issue is that I’m unpredictable to myself and I find it hard to guess at what I will want to do and how much willpower would be required to make myself try to do otherwise, including brainstorming solutions that don’t require willpower. I think there’s a lot of other stuff going on with this but its hard to figure out what else I’m thinking.
Stopping commentary here, right before the Replying section of the article.
META-COMMENT: I think this attempt at trying questioning intuition went a little better.
You’d be able to comment on articles more reliably if you wrote short comments. Long comments are fine, but you aren’t writing them on most of the articles, so it’d be good to use short comments more often too. Short comments are easier.
I agree that it would be worthwhile to try posting more with shorter comments. I don’t think I can react to entire articles as well with short comments so I will commenting on quotes or parts from the articles.
Seems to be a typo in the first sentence (my emphasis):
On a discussion forum, you can do a project a project or a single activity.