in good time
- The literal meaning of this simply means "with no risk of being late" but I want to point at something more phenomenological here.
- It's subtle because it's got a mindset element that is completely independent of how things are actually going, but it's also very importantly not just a mindset thing—it's possible for something to be not happening in good time and if so then thinking that it is happening in good time is as wrong as thinking it's sunny out when there's actually a thunderstorm.
- So, it's a perception. It can also be illusory. What is it?
- I'll just try using it in a sentence. Sometimes you have a situation where the situation would be very bothersome if it were going to stay the way it is, but it's entirely unbothersome because it's being solved in good time.
- What does in good time actually mean?
- It's perhaps impossible to say precisely in a sort of objective sense, because it depends on a person's expectations, needs, and risks, which all depend on context.
- But let's consider a few examples.
- Someone is walking to the bus stop and will be there in 10 minutes. The bus is due to depart in 5 minutes. Their trip to the bus stop is not happening in good time.
- But if the bus were due to depart in 15 minutes, Their travel would be in good time. Or if they were to start running, then things might be in good time again.
- This is a simple travel metaphor which is almost to simple to illustrate anything other than the standard literal meaning of in good time of "without risk of being late"
- Suppose someone is single and wants to get married and have kids. But they don't currently know anybody they think would be a good fit. So they have to meet people, which is a profoundly unpredictable process.
- Some people in this situation will have a feeling of playfulness and a feeling of "this is going to take the time that it takes"
- Others will have a sense of fear & scarcity of like "oh no, this isn't happening fast enough"
- Importantly, as I mentioned at the top, I'm not saying that it's correct to feel that things are happening in good time. It might be inaccurate!
- As an overarching attitude, the more relaxed approach tends to be more successful, as long as it doesn't ignore actual signals that the strategy being used is missing something vital and unlikely to work (which is often what the not-in good time feeling is about)
- A kid who is upset because something they want isn't happening fast enough when it's indeed happening as fast as possible doesn't yet have calibrated timing expectations that allow them to experience the sense in which it's on it's way and no amount of upset will hasten it.
- Part of the mindset bit is that everything that will actually happen will have happened in good time, ie in the time it took. Every future you can possibly coherently want is a future whose past includes this very moment.
- (See post-regret)
- However, insofar as you have preferences of some futures over others—and no matter how enlightened or nihilistic are, you do; you have to in order to behave in some specific fashion rather than so randomly you couldn't be reading these words—then you may find that futures you care about are at risk of not happening in good time / at all, in which case you would want to do something about that.
- This is also confusing though because sometimes you might have a part of you that has a want/preference etc that you aren't consciously aware of, which might be causing you to avoid doing something that you consciously think it would be wise to do, leading to a feeling of not-in good time even though in some sense the tempo is right in a way you don't actually understand.
- (It's also possible for such a conflict to yield a result that neither perspective is happy about, in which case the question to ask is "is this conflict getting surfaced and resolved in good time?")
- This relates to People overestimate how much they can do in a day, but underestimate how much they can do in a year
- (which is actually a modified version of a Bill Gates quote which originally had "year" and "decade", and in think that paradoxically both are in some sense true.)
- What's the opposite of in good time?
- One opposite is pre-success failure, a feeling that occurs when one doesn't adequately allow that doing almost anything takes time, and expects (on some level, perhaps unconscious) the error to be resolved sooner than is realistically possible.
- Another is procrastination—that is, procrastination in the phenomenological sense, referring to the subjective experience of something not happening in good time and of needing to take some action in order for that to be true.
5 linked references
May 30th, 2021
sense of psy-op around better not to start; if you start … › something key about trusting your own sensemaker / everyt…
- but on the gripping hand, part of what the whole better not to start; if you start better to finish quote is getting at in the first place is the thing where even if things can be untangled in the limit, they may not be able to be in good time since life is trappable!
in the meantime
- Mark Lippmann talks about handledness as a first-person experience of everything working in the meantime and in good time
May 1st, 2021
- oh, better example for in good time
- suppose you're hungry
- you have an error
- then you put food on the stove and it's cooking and you just need to wait
- now you still sort of have an error (you're still hungry) but as long as you're happy to wait until the food is done and don't feel the need to snack in the meantime then in a different sense nothing is erroneous because the food is readying in good time
April 26th, 2021
- (which pairs interestingly with in the meantime!)