Post 38: On Slack - Having room to be excited

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2023-01-23 06:00:07

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 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 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