This entry is probably going to be a train wreck. Consider yourself warned.
I've got a million half-baked ideas in my head that seem to interconnect, and it seems important to get them out on "paper" somehow-- but I'll be darned if I have any idea where to start, or how to go about accomplishing this. Pretty ironic, considering my BA in English, huh?
Worse yet, even if I do make a decent effort, someone will stumble across this entry and interpret it in a way that I never intended it. They might get offended, or have hurt feelings, or something I can't even anticipate. The odds of it coming out right, being understood, helping another person, etc. are tiny. The smart thing is to quit before I even get started.
Good thing I'm stupid about these kind of things then, eh? ;)
Here's the deal-- I am the product (or victim!? Ha ha!) of a liberal arts education. I see connections between all sort of different academic disciplines. A change or discovery in one area of human knowledge creates ripples in other areas of life. This can actually be a good thing, because some times you can take what you know about in one area-- like economics, for instance-- and apply it to other situations in your life entirely, like nutrition. Yeah, I know, it's a stretch to see it if you weren't indoctrinated in the liberal arts tradition and prefer the traditional Western thought of dissecting something into its component pieces and studying them in a vacuum.
I'm not saying that you have to see things the way I do in order to understand this post or to get along with me-- I'm just letting you know where my head is at and what perspective I'm coming from as I write this entry.
I'm in the very early stages of what looks like will become a massive home improvement project. This is the planning and studying stage, I guess you'd say. I feel woefully unprepared for this task, and trying to enlist professional help seems to be almost as frustrating and pointless as doing the work myself. There's just so much to be done, and the amount of time and money is going to be staggering.
There is one lesson I've managed to pick up though-- it's not enough to do the work; it has to be done in a specific sequence. For instance, add any new electrical work before you upgrade your insulation. Again, it's a lame and obvious example-- but what did you expect? I'm not a contractor; I'm an amateur who's in desperate need of an architect/contractor/designer and son on.
If this simple fact (i.e. doing the right tasks in the right sequence) translates from home improvement to-- well, to the way in which we choose to run our lives-- then it's hard not to become one of these neurotic and obsessed "efficiency experts." I don't want to be that guy who argues about whether it's "better" to button your shirt from the top button down, or the bottom button up. The potential ROI for such a small change makes it almost worthless to even contemplate.
However, it does bring a character flaw of human nature to light. We tend to want "to do everything" now. We're like little kids-- we want to be cowboys AND astronauts AND railroad engineers AND firemen, all at the same time. We lack the discipline to focus on one thing and invest the time, energy and technique/craftsmanship in it to get the best results. We spread ourselves way too thin and then wonder why we are getting such average or even piss poor results.
Modern day society doesn't exactly make it any easier, either. There's so much competition for our attention now, it takes a super-human amount of will power (or a convenient electrical blackout!) not to get sidetracked. I suspect that in the not-to-distant future, there will be a place of business where people go to "unplug from the grid" and isolate themselves from all possible distractions.