Skip to main content

Two Questions to Simplify Your Life

The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field. 

The Art Of War - Sun Tzu
Chapter 1: Number 3

In making decisions, one has to consider a lot of factors. In short everything needs to be considered. In the book The Art of War, there are five constant factors:

  1. The Moral Law
  2. Heaven
  3. Earth
  4. The Commander
  5. Method and discipline
Which means a lot of thinking and doing is involve.

I'm lazy and I hate big tasks. I don't want to make long decision making. I want them done immediately, accurately and fast. And so, I have to just simplify the problem.

Once the problem is identified, ask these questions:

  1. Is it Urgent?
  2. Is it Important?

Sample: You were given 10 things to deal with and they want you to make a decision in 2 minutes. Go through each of them and ask "Is this urgent?". In the end you have divided them in two - urgent and non urgent. Next, concentrate on the urgent things and go through each of them, again and ask, this time, "Is this Important?". So, you have divided the urgent things to important and not important. Now everything is simple. Start deciding on this hierarchy

  1. Urgent and important
  2. Urgent but not important
  3. Not Urgent but important
  4. Not urgent and not important

Know this by heart and you'll be able to decide faster than ever.

Labels:

Popular

Contextual Stratification - Chapter 21: No Theory of Everything

  The Most Seductive Dream There is a dream that haunts physics, philosophy, and the human imagination itself: one equation. One framework. One truth that explains everything. Einstein spent the last decades of his life searching for it, a unified field theory that would reconcile gravity with electromagnetism, that would show all forces as manifestations of a single underlying reality. He failed, but the dream didn't die. String theory arose promising eleven dimensions and one fundamental entity, vibrating strings from which all particles and forces emerge. Loop quantum gravity offered another path. M-theory suggested a framework encompassing all frameworks. The quest continues. Physicists still seek the Theory of Everything (TOE) the final equation that would subsume quantum mechanics and relativity, explain all particles and forces, predict all phenomena. The dream is powerful because it promises ultimate understanding. No more mysteries. No more competing frameworks. No more b...
Read more

Conversations with Grok (Part 2): Come To Think of It

Be updated and read the previous part here:  Conversations with Grok (Part 1): Introducing Agile Transportation System Me: Since I'm from Manila Philippines, which I'm guessing you already know, starting it in BGC to prove effectiveness and partnering with companies like telecoms(smart and globe) for internet, google for tech and cloud, digital payments(gcash and maya) for fare, the BGC administrator for location and other companies may seem effective Grok : You’re absolutely right—starting a routeless, agile transportation system in Bonifacio Global City (BGC) in Manila, Philippines, and partnering with heavy hitters like Smart, Globe, Google, GCash, Maya, and the BGC administrator could be a slam dunk for proving effectiveness. BGC’s a perfect testing ground: it’s compact, modern, tech-savvy, and already a hub for innovation. Let’s unpack how this could play out and why it might work. Why BGC Works BGC’s got a lot going for it. It’s a planned urban district with a dense mix o...
Read more

Artificial Intelligence Does Not Understand

Artificial Intelligence does not understand, at least not in the way humans mean the word understanding. This is not a criticism of AI’s capability, but a clarification of context. The confusion arises because we collapse multiple meanings of “understanding” into a single, unexamined concept. When AI performs well in language, reasoning, or problem-solving tasks, we intuitively project human comprehension onto it. But this projection ignores a critical distinction: understanding is not a monolith, but is stratified across contexts. Without contextual stratification, discussions about AI intelligence, alignment, and consciousness become incoherent. We argue past each other, using the same word while referring to fundamentally different phenomena.
Read more