LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Do things for as many reasons as possible” by Philipreal


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Epistemic Status: A fun heuristic. Advice is directional

We all are constantly making decisions about how to spend our time and resources, and I think making these decisions well is one of the most important meta-skills one can possibly have. Time spent valuably can quickly add up into new abilities and opportunities, time spent poorly will not be returned. One tool that I've found helpful in making these decisions is this: choose the option for which I have the highest number of reasons to do it. These can be reasons as simple as "I like it" or as complex as "I think this will raise the odds that I have an easy option for keeping my housing costs low in the future."

When applied, I've found that this works well in everyday time management questions, and I believe it's been helpful in larger decisions as well, although those are [...]

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First published:

October 6th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QfTqfGfvNw7LbAJD4/do-things-for-as-many-reasons-as-possible

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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