Macroscope

Many, many things have a tendency to fill the available space provided for them. The way gas will always expand to fill all the available space, many conceptual things do the same. It’s a constant struggle for many that their expenditures constantly expand to fill all the available money they have – no matter how much they make, they always seem to spend it all and have none left over. Tasks often take as long as we allot them; if you give yourself 2 hours to clean your house it will take 2 hours, but if you give yourself 8 hours the same task will mysteriously take all that time.

Another feature that seems to always remain constant regardless of the space for it is “overthinking.”

If you take a group of five smart people and give them three days to work on a very important problem, you’ll see a certain level of activity. Good brainstorming, engineering of solutions, detail-oriented thinking mixed with big-picture focus. It will feel like a good approach to the relevance of the issue.

But if you take those same five smart people and give them the same three days, but give them a tiny, inconsequential matter to work on and you will see all the exact level of energy, work, and effort.

What you won’t see is those five people saying “This thing really doesn’t matter much, because we’re deciding what color to paint the back door of the post office, so let’s all just phone it in.” That almost never occurs to people. That’s the task at hand, so its “importance” will expand to fill the space their minds and schedules have provided it.

The lesson here: it’s easy to fall into the trap of letting other people set your scope for you, and for you to believe it. Be careful. The macro view is valuable, even if it means you have to look beyond what you’re actually working on. Keep the effort where it will do the most good.