Overwhelming Multiplicity of Projects
Value Based Prioritization & Purpose Hierarchy
I want to write about nearly everything. There is an experience of sensory overload when I have to decide week to week, time availability is variable and limited, making it difficult to decide what to tackle. Internal pressure drives me to write increasingly better articles, especially when I feel the previous article turned out reasonably well. The higher I climb, the steeper the slope. Not unlike coming onstage after someone else’s killer talent show act.
At first, I was going to write about dimensionality. Then I considered writing about the website I've been building. Then I was thinking I could resume editing my article on “The Orders of Magnitude” governance structure and some of its gaps.
I could’ve written about my AI trading project or the task/project management website interface I have in its basic form. I’ve also spent a little time on my reactor simulation project.
While trying to determine what to write about, I found that the worded exploration itself may be worth reading. Though scattered, writing itself clarifies the answers through the process of explaining why and how.
Finding my own Covered Tracks
It’s peculiar even to me as to why I seem to wander away from the underlying goal these projects this writing and these ideas are intended to facilitate. Which is to increase my freedom to my spend time as I see fit. Building my own business to secure more time freedom being the pathway forward. As well as to help you my readers increase your time freedom as well.
To that end.
Vending keeps popping up as an underserved industry in the US. I like it because it has an existing business strategy, and it would make a profitable base for my automation company. It’s not another project with yet undetermined customers. It could potentially support these other automation projects of mine. A simple business that provides clear value to people while maintaining the potential to fix “the money problem”.
The question I keep asking myself is: why am I not focusing on that? Yet the other day I was dreaming about building an automated sub-foundation drilling-printing robot that consumes my mind from time to time...
I nearly bought a projector for another AI education/presentation project I had cooked up a while ago. I thought about combining multiple projects into one: “The Omnivision-Robotic-Projector”. Using a projector to overlay information over top of its environment. It could help direct tasks through integrated AI, guiding the user step-by-step. Imagine a generalized teaching assistant capable of helping practice any skill. The possibilities abound. The first idea was to enable it to teach new panel builders at work by watching and directing. Back when it would be a fixed projector and camera. A more specialized and achievable directive.
The theater of my mind is a mess, like a cluttered desk or room. Such chaos hampers clarity and progress in the right direction. Squirreling here or there is no way to succeed. The definition of success being: “The progressive realization of a worthy ideal” I’ve got to focus on one project objective at a time.
Some of these experimental project endeavors would be possible if I had surplus resources, until then, I’m timebound. Freedom of time is the real freedom.
Focus Maclaine Focus.
Too Many Projects Problem
Having bogged down my mind with too many projects. The solution is always the same. Dedicate myself to one effort and forgo everything else until MVP is in production. I did it first with the solar project, my college final project, and then with the Pond AI project. I’m re-realizing that once I commit to one goal, I can build any project into a steady production-like state where it’s minimally viable.
I’ve mentioned the theory of constraints as one way to narrow down decision space. This process of determining the single limiting factor helps me focus on improving that one thing that matters most. Time Availability…
Right now, the limiting factor appears to be monetary resources, which when achieved lead to increased freedom of time. Long ago, I dubbed this challenge: "Solving the Money Problem." Once I have enough to cover recurring expenses plus 10-20% surplus, I can pursue my higher order challenges with substantially lower time limitations.
Now is the time to ask: which project deserves my time and attention this time? Half Answer: The one that provides enough value to warrant invoice payments in order to increase my time freedom.
While I do work and earn, I sometimes feel like I’m following a path laid out for me by others, not by myself. It’s a standard, constrained path, incommensurate with long term fulfillment.
Ultimately, I’m still facing the same goal: solving the money problem. That’s why starting my own business seems like the only solution. Not because it will allow me to work less, but because it will let me work on what’s fulfilling long-term.
I Have No Shortage of Ideas
What do I do with all these ideas? It’s overwhelming to have so many possibilities. I need to organize them, settle them, delete or give them away. I’ve known that a hierarchy might help—I’ve been using Obsidian for notes and writing recently. I have a few plugins. I used excalidraw to make this.
A question I ask myself is "If money were no object, what would I do with my time?" a more realistic question is, "If I had enough money to live comfortably, what project would I spend my time on?" I usually find myself wanting to reform the education process, as I did not enjoy mine. Because I really want my daughter to enjoy learning, building, and practicing a full stack of skills education promises to provide.
Since some of my higher level, longer-term ambitions are hardware and capital intensive, a larger team effort and investment strategy will become more important down the road.
Should I even think about those before solving the primary constraint? Certainly not nearly as much as I think about them now, as they cannot be achieved without solving the present constraints.
Architecture of Generational Goal Hierarchy
This is where I’ve been missing the mark. All of my projects aim at higher-level aspirations but require solving lower-level problems to make progress. They’re interconnected in a way that makes them appealing, in a kind of procrastinatory way.
“Writing about the thing is not doing the thing”
“Thinking about the thing is not doing the thing”
“Planning to do the thing is not doing the thing”
“Talking about the thing is not doing the thing”
My personal favorite example of this procrastinatory thinking is the high-level idea of energy abundance. Broad-scale societal prosperity depends on continuously reducing the cost of energy. Evidence shows that as energy costs decrease, more people gain more opportunities. Conversely, when energy is expensive, it increases the cost of goods and services and decreases general opportunity especially at the low end of earners. (A good way to detect someone’s true intentions is to ask and watch how they act to increase cheap abundant energy for the poor)
Another more important example is the focus on individuals’ family values. If their society promotes and supports the raising of children. A continuously increasing labor force is a huge boon to general welfare. More people thinking more about how to make everything better is a general good.
Without a strong child centric ethos, society will collapse due to lack of labor. Mental and Physical. Mental being more important as physical becomes amplified mechanically thus the importance of cheap energy. Humans are the limiting factor in our own prosperity and without more young people to cook, build, harvest, and prepare, a civil society will collapse under its own weight. (History repeats itself) AI and Robotics can augment us but cannot fully replace humans. This problem is identifiable via the inverting population pyramid.
This is why God (a unifying Tao) sits at the top of my hierarchy. Monotheism is an upgrade over polytheism because many gods always war to sit highest. Where a unified field is only imaginarily separated.
Another facet of that goal is to build and launch the Interstellar Seed of Life so that life on Earth can extend beyond its tree, take root elsewhere and spread. This also requires a lot of work, but it’s more specific. Another related human goal is to build heaven on Earth—a broad goal that will take unknown quantities of work and refinement through feedback.
Below those are the goals of building a Thorium Reactor Factory, enabling energy hyper-abundance—clean water, heat, electricity, and everything that comes with that (like indoor vertical farming). Which enables the above goal of building and launching Interstellar Seeds of Life.
The DAO (Distributed Autonomous Organization) would be a part of the structure which enables those higher-level goals, helping to organize and fund these projects. Bitcoin provides an invulnerable encryption-based validation base for the DAO. The Orders of Magnitude functions to extend the American Constitution—preventing centralization of power and keeping responsibility at the most local level. Empowering individual ratification of the constitution and consensus rather than majority vote.
Below or parallel to the DAO is the project of cheap and accessible broadscale education for the young and old alike. Critical for instilling baseline family values which maintain a functional civil society. The internet has enabled cheap access to information, but distilling it and encoding it in a gamified way is still in progress. Acceleration will be needed to prevent the current collapse of values/alignment.
It’s kind of odd that I have required such a high-level architecture for my personal motivation/discipline. In aim of recognizing the importance of this most local goal of personal resource abundance. Why I had to learn so much about those ideas which are so far away from myself personally before coming to the present conclusion of “Solving the Money Problem” is not yet clear.
A Man with a “Why” can bear any “How” - Friedrich Nietzsche
AI as a Tool for Project Management (An Aside)
Most recently, a new way I manage this complexity is through the use of AI(LLMs) to break down and explore ideas and their tasks.
Yet another project I started working on was building an agent architecture to help me manage these goals. I previously mentioned a product where a camera, Raspberry Pi, and projector could turn any surface into an interactive display. This could expand into education or goal-tracking concepts, creating a hierarchy of task breakdowns. AI helps me amplify and flesh out ideas, making the complexity more manageable. Writing brings all of it into the present, which leads me to evaluate the project ideas.
The Challenge of Value
There is an equation which should enable me to identify the most valuable project. It is called: the Value Equation, a concept introduced to me by Alex Hormozi in his book 100 Million Dollar Offers:
(Dream Outcome X Perceived Value) / (Time Delay X Effort & Sacrifice) = Value
Each on a scale of 1-10. Rank Projects:
Dream Outcome:
How does this compare to my dream outcome?
Perceived Value:
How high of value do I think this dream outcome is?
Time Delay:
How long will it take to achieve?
Effort & Sacrifice:
How much effort and sacrifice does this require?
Calculate Value:
(DO*PV)/(TD*ES) = valueequation.netlify.app
By using this simplified model, we invert the process of sales, into a personal assessment of what’s valuable and doable for ourselves.
I want to note that even with high dream outcomes(10) and perceived value(10), the time delay(2) and effort(2) have outsized effects reducing the total value. Reducing these lower variables is critical to increasing value. For example, vending offers low time delay and effort compared to my other projects. Visit value equation app to see the numbers.
Circling Back
Despite AI amplifying my internal dialogue, it doesn’t always help me organize my ideas in the way that works best for me. And that's fine, because it’s still just a tool. I’ve laid out many ideas, linked them together, and now I have a method of ranking. The task is now to rank them by value.
I simply need to determine and commit to the single project that provides the most value. Then get it into a production state, I’ll prioritize that project based on the value equation and focus on the one that moves me towards solving the money problem. Which in turn will solve my time problem and enable me to build more of my dream projects in the order of most to least value.
I’ll be updating my website as I build out the hierarchy details into the website’s structure. I’m always open to feedback, please find me however suits you and I’ll respond.
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