How do we do right things? I'm sure that almost everyone can divide between good and evil (even though there are different points of view).

But the right things in the right time? There is always a difference between the things you ought to do, you want to do and you actually do and those which would be the best for you in retrospection.

Optimizing

Premature optimization is the root of all evil -- DonaldKnuth

Optimization is hard, we have methods to do it, you can learn them for example in this course. I'm talking about an optimization here, because I often find it hard to decide what would be good for me, I'm not sure in setting my own goals and so on and when I actually try optimizing doing real things, I tend to be less productive that I would probably be just doing the stuff sequentially.

There are two sides of optimization: planning and execution. I think that the biggest obstacle is unsureness about the future. When you have much control, optimizing can be very rewarding, but when random things happen it becomes less efective and more stresful and we can end up with premature optimization.

Learning and creating

Should I spend more time learning new things or mastering old ones? Should I gain a profound knowledge in some subject or just pass a test?

Do I really care about it? Will I need it? Or it's just seems exciting, but I'm too tired to get anything from it?

And those questions are only about learning, what about actual creation or just doing stuff because it creates value?

Creation takes time, same with solving real problems for example with business logic or doing projects. The more you do, the less time you have for next interesting new thing.

Maybe you are sticking to your last project because of sunk costs? Or your afraid to be accused of never finishing anyth?

But what if you're just wasting your time and resources?

One of my friends says that's it's important to do something. And what it is exactly doesn't really matter. However I'm not sure about it, I just can't not evaluate things, some are more valuable and useful and some are less.

The other important distinction for me is useful/valuable and good for your development. Lot's of mundane things which I do aren't most optimal for my development, but are useful and good, etc.

I'm a learner type. I really enjoy new articles, libraries, theories, etc. Learning new skills I enhance my potential, I become a better ... whatever I do in this moment. But I can't just have more and more potential.

What for? I have to spend it somewhere! Do things, to feel useful, productive and accomplish something (not only excercise). The bittest side of learning is forgetting. Learning and forgetting. To remember new knowledge and truly understand it you should use it to solve real problems. And real problems are hard. And you have to be prepared and take your time to learn things which will enable you to solve it.

It might sounds a bit like a gibberish, but doing (both creating and executing) and learning cannot escape each other. And to gain great knowledge and accomplish great things you'll need both. But right balance?

Learning and inspiration

I realized that reading "technical blogs" I rarely learn something nontrivial. I learn by solving problems by reading long books on subject. But reading blogs articles is wortwhile nonetheless because I often get inspired by them to try something new or now more about industry, feeling of people similar to me. It's entertaining but a bit shallow.

Reading long, complicated books or doing courses such us edX or coursera is hard, takes time, and you often don't get enough feedback (especially from books ;).

I often find my studies (applied physics) both too specialised and not comprehensive enough.

And I'm not really sure what exactly want to learn. Everything is not an answer, at least in the nearest future. And getting to much inspiration creates lots of wasted time and not accomplishing anything.

Decisions

Summing up, I don't believe in real-time life optimization, don't know what I want to do or learn precisely.

I wanted to set some goals because of new year resolutions, but I'm procrastinating. I'm procrastingating because I don't feel so sure if I would be able to finish them or if I wouldn't change my mind. But without big goals I'm driven by other people and I like a feeling of control over my life and satisfaction from accomplishments.

I'm looking for the right things to do.