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 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. You can take the time and energy to break out of whatever bad local optima 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. It’s easy to notice a bottleneck and resolve to Try Harder and fix it. But your resources are spent in day-to-day life, bit by