OK, I'll try and answer with fairly straight-forward points, as you seem to be in need of practical ways of judging these kinds of decisions:
1) When thinking about "things that need changing", it is very important to know two things first: a) How important is it to you? b) How easy is it to obtain?
You then decide if or not the combination of the two surpasses your "internal threshold". Or, if you're so inclined, think of it as an equation: if (difficulty / importance) > threshold: go for it.
In human language: If something is important to you, but it is extremely/impossibly difficult, you might want to just let it go. This is basically what the prayer alludes to.
Of course, you realize by now that the wisdom actually lies in being able to judge importance, difficulty and your internal threshold. This is something which you will simply have to practice all your life. If you keep yourself mindful about what worked/what didn't work and what made you happy/what didn't, this is doable.
Another helpful tip in this area is to realize that your idea of what is important is inherently subjective. Most philosophical thinkers will then tell you that you should tune down the importance of "need" (for physical stuff especially) and tune up the importance of moral values (e.g. loyalty, etc).
2) This one is fairly easy to solve: flip the roles in your head. What if someone were to ask you in exactly the same circumstances for the same thing? What would you feel about that? This should give you guidance in the appropriateness of the question. (This is by the way pretty much the "do unto others as you would them do unto you" rule.)
3) Productivity that simultaneously makes you unhappy while doing it and provides you with long-term happiness is as undesirable as non-productivity ("comfort") that makes you happy in the instant and unhappy in the long-term. Why not go for productivity and non-productivity that makes you happy both in the instant AND in the long-term? None of these things are mutually exclusive. Breaking this down is fairly easy: do a job you enjoy (no excuses!) and give yourself well-deserved breaks when you've earned them (no excuses). Neither of those situations should make you feel guilty in the slightest, otherwise you're doing something wrong.
Psychologically, consider this: in the long-term, you will only remember the fun and exciting bits (both work-wise and leisure-wise). You will not even remember the "hard but boring work" in a few years! This implies that your long-term happiness relies on being able to aggregate whole series of happy memories, none of the boring bits are important.
Caveat 1: Sometimes you do have to do something you don't enjoy. Just don't make it a life-style. Caveat 2: Some "comfort" gives you as little positive memories as boring work does. I'd put doing drugs and playing a lot of video-games in that category, but you can make up your own mind about that.
Thanks, this is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.
This one is fairly easy to solve: flip the roles in your head.
I actually don't agree with this, for reasons suggested by the power balance discussions going on elsewhere. The two people aren't the same; notably, they have different needs, wants, and capabilities. Even in a roughly equal relationship, the participants are able to give each other different things; it's reasonable to ask for something the other person can give, but which you could not give them.
This does a good job of defining th...
I'm working on a list of question types which come up frequently in day-to-day life but which I haven't yet found a reliable, rational way to answer. Here are some examples, including summaries of any progress made in the comments.
Practice the ability to judge how important something is to change, making sure to examine your criteria of importance. Identify the reasons you want to change it, and try to normalize your emotional response to the facts. Learn about the difficulty of changing a thing by investigating other peoples' attempts to. Be aware that, the less one knows about a field, the less one is able to judge how difficult a task in that field is. Ask an expert if you need to. Another heuristic for difficulty of changing something is that the closer it is to one's own mind, the more control one has over it. When you know as much as you can, do a cost-benefit analysis.
Unreasonable requests are those which would only be fulfilled if the asker had power over the askee which they do not, which represent an unequal exchange between equals, or which are not actually possible. We don't want to make unreasonable requests because they are at best unfair social impositions and at worst rude and damaging to relationships. This is complicated because requests between friends aren't about direct exchange; it's expected that sometimes one person will need help, and sometimes the other will, and in the long run it'll even out. In a strong friendship where both people have treated each other well, it's more appropriate to ask for a large favor than it would be to ask a relative stranger the same thing.
The difficult requests to judge are those where the power balance or strength of the relationship, or the values of what's being exchanged, are unclear. That is, they require a more accurate judgment of either the relationship itself or of the other person's needs and abilities than one is confident of making. As in the previous question, specialized knowledge can help predict how much trouble a given request might be. In the specific example above, one would need to understand the cost of lending an ear, in terms that could be compared to the benefit of venting. Prior communication is the best way to achieve this; basing an estimate on similar past situations is also good. Knowing nothing else, use an assumption of equality and the basic responsibility for oneself as heuristics. Finally, how close you can get to the edge of what's acceptable may depend on how much you trust the other person to tell you if your request is not reasonable (rather than acquiescing resentfully).
It's possible to minimize the necessity of choosing between these two things by doing work which is enjoyable and taking breaks after earning them. When the two types of activity do conflict, one way to get around it is to use time that wasn't available for work anyway to do unproductive things. Another is to have (and frequently review) clearly defined medium- and long-term goals, and weigh short-term choices against them. Doing this regularly may make it easier to judge activity choices on the fly.
No comments yet, but here are some questions this raises for me: What does it mean to have reached your peak in a skill--is there actually a maximum amount you can usefully learn and practice, or just a (potentially variable) point of diminishing returns? Is it possible to know there's more to learn but not be able to learn it?
So far, the only mitigating factor I've found is my overall physical and mental state. Being hungry, tired, or stressed makes it easier to fall into the anger cycle and harder to get out. Therefore, taking care of myself in general helps to prevent it, but it's not always possible to remedy those problems after the cycle has already started. When circumstances permit, physical activity may provide an outlet for the energy that keeps this cycle going.
A conversation offsite led to the following: Manipulation involves both deliberate instigation of emotion and trying to persuade someone to do what you want, but isn't defined by either. (The first one describes gestures of affection, and the second includes ordinary debate.) The definition we settled on was "using emotion to bypass someone's normal decision-making process." Trying to get someone to do what you want is not inherently manipulative; trying to make them feel something so that they will do what you want is.
Naturally I'm looking for ideas about how to answer these questions, including links to earlier thoughts about them[2], but you get bonus points for supplying actually usable heuristics, rather than just opining on my examples. But I'd also like to hear it if you've got any questions of your own that fit this form. Consider it a sort of lowbrow subset of open problems--difficulties you're aware of having on a regular basis but haven't yet been able to solve.
(Tag suggestions are appreciated. I'm unaccustomed to using content tags, so I made some guesses based on the site's tagcloud and what's on the similar Open Problems post.)
[1] I actually quite like the Serenity Prayer, despite being entirely nontheistic, because it presents a set of traits to aspire to for specific purposes I can get behind.
[2] Until I've read the entire LW archive, I'm constantly paranoid that anything I post will be a second-rate rehash.