Noticeably social and exuberant

It's almost embarrassing how much noticeably more social and exuberant I am when I don't have something hanging over me. And embarrassing that I almost always DO, not because there's something bad, but because I let something slide until it becomes a horribly overdue source of stress. Whenever I feel like this, I always say "I wonder if I can stay like this", but though it often improves incrementally, it never lasts well.

It feels strange that this Jack is the Jack I think of as me, but since exasperated-and-stressed-and-tacitern Jack is more common, other people are much more likely to see him as the normal Jack, or not to notice any difference.

I lament the time -- ages -- I can spent procrastinating, intimidated by piles of stuff I meant to do. When if I'd at least done some of it, I'd probably have less running late AND had more fun. This week everything has been a breath of air. I've often felt like that starting a new project, and I think every time I am better, but also, it's never before lasted past the next big crisis.

Either way, ask me in a month how the purged, merged, and total master todo list system is: I think I have made a permanent improvement with my burst of organisation over the weekend, even if I can't say whether it'll be a noticeable one or a tiny one.

We spend almost all of our time doing things we're not really sure how to do

How much time do you spend living outside your comfort zone? Some jobs, you basically have to do what you've done before. If you're building a house, there's an amount of creative work, but also, you have to put more and more bricks on top of each other, and once you've decided where they're going to go, you need a level of skill (which you may have greater or lesser) but to some extent you have to do what you've done before, but more so.

Whereas with, say, maths research, or writing non-formulaic fiction, you are doing to a high extent stuff you've NOT done before. There are many higher-level organisations that are the same (you investigate new maths the new way with the same set of skills whatever it is), but you are constantly doing new stuff.

Programming falls somewhere in the middle. Note, I'm not making a value judgement about which end is better. But inherently, with programming, in some sense, if it's been done before, it's DONE. Not as much as maths, where you can just quote it, but you can often reuse it, or if you've done it before, you can probably hammer it out again in boilerplate code in not very long. Whereas when you're figuring out how to do something you've not done before, figuring out how it all works takes a long time.

But that means, for some tasks you already know how to do, you do very quickly, and for some, you have to learn as you go, you'll spend much more time on the latter (because if you get all sorts of tasks, it's the latter that will take longer to complete). So you will ALWAYS feel like you're constantly managing stuff you're not quite on top of.

All voting systems have flaws

All voting systems have flaws. It's been mathematically proven[1]. That means, pointing out (very significant) flaws in the current system is a good argument for change, but every time I see someone doing that, while I know why it's so valuable, I always see the implicit "and whatever alternative proposed system will also have flaws, but they'll affect typical british politics much less" afterwards. And I think that's probably TRUE with the current decision, but I'm acutely aware that WHICHEVER way people wished to persuade people, they could probably dig up unpalatable examples, so the mere existence of a flaw is a good propaganda tool[2], but should be recognised as a propaganda tool, not a complete argument.

[1] Well, sort of.
[2] Which is a natural part of politics -- something needs to counter "I'm comfortable with the current system and scared of change" on an emotional level, and "why it sucks" is a good choice.