wnoise comments on Improving The Akrasia Hypothesis - Less Wrong
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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:
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.)
Some programmers do something like this when they're stuck on a problem - they call it Rubber Ducking. Googling it I just found 4 separate stories about students having to explain their programming problems out loud to teddy bears before they get to ask a teacher.
I prefer the teddy bear, because then you can refer to it as the "bug bear".