pjeby comments on Improving The Akrasia Hypothesis - Less Wrong

69 Post author: pjeby 26 February 2010 08:45PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Golovin 27 February 2010 07:09:19PM *  22 points [-]

It doesn't deserve a top-level post, but I do have a method for locating conflicts that works for me -- a written self-interview. I open an empty Word document, and imagine that I'm being interviewed by someone (or something?) smarter, more confident or higher-status than me.

I won't quote my existing interview documents -- they're too context-dependent, and sometimes too personal -- but here's an example of how it usually looks like:

Alpha: You look depleted. What's bothering you?
Me: I feel that the work I'm doing isn't leading me anywhere.
Alpha: What do you mean by 'anywhere'? Money? Fame? Personal satisfaction?
Me: Money.
Alpha: So, you think that the work you're doing isn't going to make you rich, right?
Me: Right.
Alpha: Then why are you doing it?
...
...

The interview continues until I find the source of the conflict and decide how to resolve it. If I can't locate it on the first session, I get back to the saved document later to continue the interview. I included the names 'Alpha' and 'Me' for readability -- I don't type any names when recording the interview.

I have at least three occasions when this technique helped me pinpoint conflicts that paralyzed me (one of them was a cause of a 6-month procrastination streak.)

Comment author: pjeby 27 February 2010 09:28:22PM 5 points [-]

This is a definitely a tool that I use, and teach other people to use. Self-inquiry doesn't have to be written, but it does have to be done, and it's generally best to do it in a way that involves an external sense - hearing yourself say it, or seeing it written. I don't know why exactly it's helpful, but it definitely is.

The biggest challenges most people have to conducting self-inquiry, though, are that:

  1. They don't know how to separate the two "voices", and stay stuck in only one side of the conversation,

  2. They engage in self-defeating behaviors, like criticizing the other voice instead of being relatively helpful/inquisitive/nurturing as you are in the dialog example you gave, and

  3. They have trouble staying focused and knowing how to take the inquiry somewhere without either letting their emotional side run on, or trying to overwhelm it with logic.

It has taken me a long time to learn how to teach around these points, some more so than others.

Comment author: Relsqui 27 September 2010 04:03:12AM 5 points [-]

I don't know why exactly it's helpful, but it definitely is.

When you keep it in your head, you don't have to form words; you can just think about what's bothering you as a vague concept. When you verbalize it externally, it forces you to clarify those ideas and pinpoint exactly what you're thinking; as far as I can tell, that's where the utility of the technique comes from.

I recently rediscovered this as a means, not of solving technical problems, but of overcoming strong negative emotions. Even when I already understood the facts and causes, "talking it out" on the page helped me vent the stress and calm down.

Perhaps in situations where your emotions are inhibiting your thinking, writing the useful parts (what you think, want, and can do) but not the useless parts ("oh god oh god everything is terrible") gives the former more weight.