# On Slack - Having room to be excited

Slack
-----

A few months ago, I came across a concept called **Slack**, and I have found this an increasingly valuable lens for understanding my life. Slack is, roughly, having **spare capacity** in my life. Not being pushed to my limits. Having downtime and room to explore. Being robust to small risks. Not feeling constantly stressed and anxious, having things weighing on my mind. In this post, I’m going to explore the concept of Slack, why the default state of the world is to _lack_ slack, why this matters, and some thoughts on what to do about this.

I first came across the concept in this [post](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/slack/) by Zvi, and it’s written fairly abstractly. And for good reason! I’ve struggled to articulate precisely what the concept really _is_. So, to see whether this resonates, here are some examples of what having Slack looks like:

*   If an urgent task comes up, you can reprioritise, put off your current work, and take care of it
*   If you’re tired and have spent the morning getting nothing done, this is fine. You can stop working early, take a long break, write the day off entirely, and get back to things tomorrow
*   If you come across something _awesome_, you can put off what you’re currently doing to take a few hours to dive deeply into it, and see what comes out of it
*   If you have an unexpected expense - you break something expensive, fall ill, etc - it’s not a big deal, your savings can absorb it

I think Slack is an _incredibly_ important component of having a life worth living! Having Slack gives you **freedom**. You have room to explore, be spontaneous and try new things. You have room to zoom out, reflect on your life, [notice problems and fix them](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-7-problems-are-for-fixing). You can take the time and energy to break out of whatever [bad local optima](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-22-the-8020-rule) you’re stuck in. You can _relax_ \- life always contains risks and setbacks, but you know that you’ll be able to deal with them when they arise. You can be free of constant short-term anxiety.

I’m labouring this point, because **the default state of the world is that your life lacks Slack**. It is obvious that Slack is important when phrased like this - zoomed out, in the abstract. But Slack is defined as **something you can spend**. There is a delicate balance between being willing to _use_ your Slack where appropriate, but also realising that it is a quantity worth treasuring - something to cherish, prioritise and guard.

And there are times when it is exceptionally hard to have Slack! Due to life circumstances, like illness or money problems. By choice, eg by choosing to do an intensive job or degree for long-term reward. But I think there are also many times where Slack is spent needlessly. Where you _always_ allocate your spare capacity away to the next priority, always trying to make your life optimal in the moment. Without noticing the bottlenecks you’re creating, and what you’re giving up. And this post is aimed at noticing ways you _waste_ your Slack, making it clearer what you’re giving up, and seeing if it’s really worth it.

Units of Exchange
-----------------

Digressing somewhat from Slack, a related lens I find useful is the idea of **units of exchange**. We often think of our lives in terms of quantifiable resources, such as time and money. This is valuable, because we often trade-off between these two resources, by trading one for the other, and tracking resource costs can tell us whether it was a good trade! For example, often jobs are just a way to trade time and labour for money. Going the other way, we often pay money to save time. For example, I made this website with Squarespace and pay a fair bit more for that than a free alternative, but I save a _lot_ of time due to things just working.

The idea of units of exchange is to introduce more **abstract** resources. Harder to quantify but important things, such as energy, willpower, sleep, focused time, attention, health, etc. Everything we do in life is a trade-off, but often we’re trading these more abstract resources too, and thinking about them can make it clear what the _actual_ trade off is. Examples:

*   I’d pay for an Uber home rather than taking the time to walk if late at night, but not during the day - during the day I’m trading money for **time**, at night I’m trading money for **sleep**
*   I’d prefer to take a train to work than drive, even if it takes longer, because I can take the time on the train to read or get work done - the true trade isn’t for **time**, it’s for **productive time**
*   I turn off all notifications when I’m working - it takes the same amount of **time** to respond now vs later, but the real cost is to my **attention** and **focus**

This mindset can sound obvious at first, but it’s often insightful when trying to diagnose a problem. For example, when I feel overwhelmed and stressed, the right solution depends a lot on which resource I lack! Maybe I just don’t have enough **time**, and can resolve this by quitting something, or being less social. Maybe I don’t have enough **sleep**, so I’m being extremely unproductive in the time I do have, and I can resolve this with better discipline around bedtimes and not staying up. Maybe I’m too **stressed**, and I really need to focus on the root cause of what’s stressing me out so I can relax more.

Units of exchange can be hard to think about, because they’re difficult to quantify - we can’t just calculate exchange rates like we can with money and time, they’re too abstract. But often this isn’t decision relevant. Often the important thing is identifying **bottlenecks** \- the resource(s) that I spend too much of, and don’t have enough of when I need them. And _this_ is where units of exchange help us to understand Slack better. **Your Slack is constrained by your tightest bottleneck**. To really have Slack, you want to have spare capacity in _all_ of your resources - enough energy and rest to pursue your interests, enough time to spare, enough willpower and attention to keep focused, enough money to be able to relax and try things.

And, accordingly, if you _find_ a bottleneck, **fixing this should be your priority**. This is likely one of the biggest constraints on your life and your Slack. Notice where you spend it in your life, and ask whether you feel happy with this allocation. Ask yourself where you can cut back. If it’s money, look at your budget. If it’s time, think about your biggest commitments and time sinks, and think about what you least value. If it’s sleep, think about your sleep routine. If it’s willpower, think about the systems in your life. The question is not whether you can afford to give something up. You’re _already_ giving up your Slack. The question is whether what you’d have to give up to fix it is better than what you’re _already_ giving up. Everything is a trade-off

I find it valuable at this point to [think in systems](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-19-on-systems-living-a-life-of-zero-willpower). It’s easy to notice a bottleneck and resolve to [Try Harder](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-6-stop-pressing-the-try-harder-button) and fix it. But your resources are spent in day-to-day life, bit by bit. If there is one big fix, then that’s awesome! Eg, an unnecessary time commitment you can just quit. But often the problem is from the **default actions** you take. Eg, bleeding attention away every time your phone buzzes. And the only sustainable solution is to **change the default**.

**Exercise**: Think about the abstract resources in _your_ life. What feels like a bottleneck? What is holding you back? What feels missing? And once you’ve found one, think about how you _spend_ it. Is there anywhere you could cut back? Are you happy with this allocation, and the Slack it costs you?

Naive Optimisation
------------------

Another failure to have Slack that I personally resonate with a lot stems from **perfectionism**, and a neurotic desire to “optimise” my life - what I call naive optimisation**.**

I’m a very big fan of _true_ optimisation - which I consider to be defining goals, identifying the actions that best achieve those goals, and shaping my life so that the default path is to _take_ those actions. I think this is awesome, and a big component of my personal growth over the past few years. But as I talk about [in this post](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-9-what-it-means-to-optimise), there’s a failure mode of **naive optimisation** that I find it easy to fall into. Where there’s a neurotic voice in my head that, in every moment, uses guilt and stress to push me towards whatever action seems best in the moment.

And naive optimisation is terrible, because this inner voice is _full_ of biases! It doesn’t account for the [value of information and trying new things, that _could_ go awesomely](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/33-upside-risk). It always needs to be in control, and fears vulnerability and risk. It’s a perfectionist, and holds me to [unrealistically high standards](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/35-standards). It takes energy to ignore, and is very hard to ever properly turn off.

But, for the purposes of this article this is important because **naive optimisation will burn away your Slack**. Slack is something to be guarded and protected to help with risks, to take opportunities, to respond to unknown unknowns. To embrace Slack is to inherently give up some aspect of control in my life. Slack is always precious, but rarely feels _necessary_. And so the neurotic voice in my head always wants to give it up. To be an overachiever, and take that extra course, since I _obviously_ have time for it. To say yes to that extra commitment. To feel bad and guilty when I have time for rest, and am not pushing myself to my limits.

Needless to say, **this is terrible**. This mindset is a significant impediment to having an awesome and fulfilling life. Even without any true hard constraints, listening to the naive optimiser can burn away all of my Slack, without me ever realising what I’m giving up. Further, **[this is a bias](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/31-overcoming-bias).** You fundamentally cannot trust yourself, in the moment, to properly protect and cherish your Slack, you need to have some form of manual override. Build systems to protect your Slack. Budget yourself time for things, and _keep_ to it. Schedule yourself downtime, and make it feel **sacrosanct**.

I find this mindset similar to the one needed to take [meaningful rest](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/29-meaningful-rest). It’s never _necessary_ to take a break. And, for any _single_ break, I might get more done if I don’t take it! And I often won’t feel like I _need_ rest when it’s time to take a break. But if, on a policy level, I systematically don’t take enough breaks, then I get stressed, tired, unfocused and get _way_ less done. So I need to overcome this systematic bias, create a manual override, and make the default action to take breaks even if it feels unnecessary. And that I can’t just listen to the naive optimiser in my head if I really want to win. Just so when it comes to preserving my Slack.

Motivation
----------

Another area of my life that is extremely important to me is motivation. Specifically, the divide between **intrinsic** motivation - doing things because I _want_ to, because I feel excited about them and driven - and **extrinsic** motivation - doing things because I have to, driving myself with guilt and obligation. And an ongoing quest is [getting over the crutch of using extrinsic motivation for everything](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/35-standards), and [cultivating a life full of intrinsic motivation](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-11-live-a-life-you-feel-excited-about). Generally, I find intrinsic motivation far more fun and far more useful, but also far more fragile and easily lost, while extrinsic motivation is often easy and available, but rarely as effective as it could be.

And this is important in the context of Slack, because when I have _low_ Slack, I feel like I need to **try hard**. Things feel scarce, I can’t afford to slack off, or take enough breaks. I need to push myself, and optimise. I need to pull out all the standard, available tools of guilt, obligation, unrealistic standards. I need to be in control. My life is driven by the voice of the naive optimiser, and I fall deep into extrinsic motivation. And, even if in reality, I _do_ have Slack, so long as the naive optimiser is in control, I’ll still be stuck on this crutch of guilt based motivation.

_Intrinsic_ motivation, on the other hand is characterised by play, curiosity and exploration. Doing something because I _want_ to, not because I _have_ to. This can often be far more fulfilling _and_ far more productive, but there is an inherent lack of control here. I need to be able to zoom out and give myself the _room_ to explore. I can’t let the inner optimiser control every last detail of what I’m doing. **To have intrinsic motivation, I must first have Slack**.

To me, this highlights well the notion of Slack as **spare capacity**, the ability to **break out of bad local optima**. If I’m pushing myself hard, I am stuck in a local optima. It feels _wrong_ to stop, to slack off. _Even though_ doing this well could give me the room to feel excited about what I’m doing, and get far more done in the long-run, I must first have enough Slack to _stop_ and reconsider.

This is an _extremely_ salient problem to me at the moment, because I’m spending the next 3 months trying out academic research. And research is characterised by exploration, following curiosity, trying things and seeing what works. But it’s _so_ easy to slip into the trap of guilt and obligation, to set myself unrealistic standards, and then push myself to meet them, without really giving myself the room to enjoy what I’m doing. (Suggestions on how to address this problem in research would be very highly appreciated!)

**Exercise:** Where do you use extrinsic motivation and guilt in your life? Are you happy with this? Have you given yourself the Slack to take a step away and try another approach?

Whimsy
------

I think there is an _excellent_ utilitarian argument for the use of intrinsic motivation, and I feel confident it’s far more effective in the long-term. But this mindset feels like using extrinsic motivation to _force_ myself to feel intrinsic motivation, which I think is doomed to failure. When aiming for an ambitious change like this, I try to imagine a future where I _have_ achieved the change, and ask myself to explain how this happened. And I cannot imagine that change happening by thinking about how _useful_ intrinsic motivation is, or how I really _ought_ to feel it more often. Instead, I think the core skill for intrinsic motivation is to **pursue something for its own sake**.

There is a particular mindset I sometimes slip into, at the times when I do feel intrinsic motivation, that feels characteristic of a flow state. Where I’m not focused on long-term goals, and am living in the moment. Where I’m introspecting, in touch with the subtle hints of curiosity and excitement in my mind. Where I’m following this sense of curiosity and drive, pursuing whatever seems most exciting in the moment, and loving what I’m currently doing. I call this state of mind **whimsy** \- being in touch with my emotions and my whims, in touch with what I really care, and following those where they lead. And I think that getting good at this mindset is key to a reliable source of intrinsic motivation.

This is not a mindset that comes to me particularly naturally, but the times when I have felt it have often been the most productive _and_ more fun times I can remember. And I think this is a _trainable_ skill - both one where I can practice slipping into the mindset, and where [I can learn how to shape my life to encourage it](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-11-live-a-life-you-feel-excited-about). And it’s a skill that is _extremely_ worth some short-term costs training, if I build it better into my life in the long-term. My ideal life wouldn’t be 100% pursuing whimsy, but it would be a fairly large long-term component.

And this isn’t a skill that can be trained by just trying harder. The main approach I’ve found is to give myself regular space for it, and see what happens. For the last few months, I’ve been calling my Sunday afternoons my **Afternoons of Whimsy**, keeping them clear, and ensuring this routine feels **sacrosanct** \- something precious that I am unwilling to give up easily. And in this time, I am not allowed to care about my long-term goals, or my various obligations. This is time carved out to introspect, find out what I feel _excited_ about doing, and pursue it.

As I said, this is something that I struggle with, and not something that comes naturally. Sometimes I’m tired and fall into a spiral of procrastination, and do a range of un-rejuvenating things like scrolling endlessly through Reddit. Sometimes I fail to keep out my long-term goals, and end up feeling obliged to do my current highest priority and trick myself into considering it “fun”. But sometimes I feel a whim to do something _fun_, that I wouldn’t normally take joy in. Like going for a spontaneous run through a thunderstorm, or cleaning up my room while singing along to Disney songs. Sometimes I feel a whim to do something cool and virtuous for its own sake - like watching lectures from an online course I’m finding interesting, writing a spontaneous blog post, trying to code up something cool, or reading a textbook on something I want to understand more deeply. Maybe one in two or three afternoons I do something really _awesome_ in hindsight. But in another sense, this isn’t the point. I don’t _care_ about exactly what I get done - this is time I carve out where the best way to achieve my long-term goals is to _not_ care about them. And so feeling regret about how it goes is missing the point. I feel confident that I’m slowly improving at the mindset of whimsy, and _that_ is the best way to achieve my long-term goals

If this idea resonates with you, some tips:

*   If you’re feeling somewhat sold on the problem I’ve outlined, but skeptical at actually dedicating so much time to this solution, [seek upside risk](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/33-upside-risk) and try it! If it works well, this is _awesome_, something you can keep doing, and could significant help with a major life bug. If not, you can just give up, at the cost of a few afternoons spent doing fun things
*   This is an experiment in pursuit of a long-term goal, so it is something you want to do long-term! Build a system around it, and make it feel **sacrosanct**. I make mine Sunday afternoons, both because Sunday is a natural time for a period of rest, and because this is a regular routine, that can help me protect and cherish it.
*   Leave yourself a long time! I find that 3 hours minimum is often necessary - I might feel a bit lazy at the start, procrastinate for a while, but then feel a whim to do something cool.
*   Try not to plan too hard in advance - early on I found myself in the failure mode of planning what to do that afternoon in the morning, and in the moment it felt a bit stale, but I tried to push through anyway

*   My current approach is to go for a walk at the start and clear my head. Then to make a wish list - set a [5 minute timer](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/post-28-on-creativity-the-joys-of-5-minute-timers), then write down anything that pops into my head that I could do, and the moment I find something that grabs me, stop writing and run with it! And if nothing seems fun, go do something else

*   Remember, the goal isn’t to find the _best_ thing - that’s the naive optimiser talking. You want to find something _fun,_ and the moment something grabs you you should run with it!
*   I find it helpful to write tasks down as “I could read …?” “I could watch …?”. It is _fine_ if I spend this afternoon doing absolutely nothing, and writing these as **wishes** anchors me to doing nothing - now anything I achieve is an upside! I otherwise find it easy to slip into the mindset of writing down a long list and getting sad at what you’re missing out on by not doing everything - anchoring yourself to doing _everything._

*   Be willing to give up on things - if you aren’t enjoying what you’re doing in the moment, switch to something else!
*   Keep in mind that it’s _fine_ to get nothing done - don’t put pressure on yourself
*   The spirit of whimsy, at least for me, isn’t _quite_ doing whatever I want. It’s about noticing and **nurturing** the feeling of excitement. If I feel drawn to something, focusing on why its _awesome_. Encouraging myself to pursue it, thinking about the upside, not about the risks and costs

Overall I’ve found this a great routine to have in my life. I think rest is an important component of my life, but it’s easy for all of my rest to just be a [recovery period](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ximou2kyQorm6MPjX/rest-days-vs-recovery-days) \- something I do in the evening after a day of work, when I feel tired and drained, and just want to switch off and recharge. My afternoons of whimsy are done when I have _energy_ \- where I can pursue things I actually care about. Where things still feel somewhat like work, and still take some energy, but feel fulfilling enough that I get out more energy than I put in. Where I can find the work-shaped things in my life that feel intrinsically worth doing for their own sake, and remind myself that I actually care about them.

Conclusion
----------

In conclusion, Slack is an _incredibly_ important resource! It’s a major component of my overall life happiness. If you aren’t explicitly thinking about it, the first step is just to realise that Slack is meaningful and important, and something to value, and to notice if your life lacks it. To guard and protect the Slack that you do have, and to carve out more if you don’t have enough.

A necessary condition for having enough Slack is not being _bottlenecked_ \- think of your life in terms of units of exchange, and notice if anything feels missing or constraining. And if you find a bottleneck, fixing that should be a major priority! How can you shift the default of your life to better preserve that resource?

A further necessary condition is to _relax_. To resist the call of the naive optimiser, to resist the urge to squeeze out every last drop of optimality in your life, and to realise that _true_ optimality is this fuzzy, imprecise balance. That to _truly_ be optimal, you can’t fully be in control, and can’t be trying as hard as possible.

Having enough Slack, and cultivating this skill is a key component of getting intrinsic motivation and drive! Which, if you’re anything like me, won’t come very naturally, but is a really important skill, and one worth putting meaningful effort into. And a way I recommend to pursue this, is to explicitly carve out time to _practice_ having intrinsic motivation and whimsy - to do things for their own sake, to let go of outside concerns and obligations, and to follow your own sense of curiosity.

Are you happy with the amount of Slack in your life? And if not, what could bring you closer to a world with more Slack? And how could you [take the first step](https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-21-taking-the-first-step) in that direction?

_If the ideas in this post resonated, related reading I’d recommend: Zvi on [Slack](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/slack/), Jacob Falkovich linking [Slack and Units of Exchange](https://putanumonit.com/2017/11/07/confessions-of-a-slacker/), some [notes for a workshop I wrote covering Units of Exchange](https://dynalist.io/d/pgngbu6nDQbQzu1Gcof3Dj1i#z=pznohefw9903y9277WlU56fW), SlateStarCodex on [the importance of Slack](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/12/studies-on-slack/). And if the ideas on extrinsic motivation resonated, I’d_ highly _recommend [the Replacing Guilt series by Nate Soares](http://mindingourway.com/guilt)_