How can you identify when you are "stuck", and when going meta has greater marginal utility than continuing on your current level of thought?

One way I've done this is via the meta-level skill of recognizing a familiar pattern in the structure of my thoughts about a problem. This familiar pattern can be addressed with my existing meta-skills (which is one reason I remember it), and so I just apply them. This is what I think Eliezer means by "routine meta-thinking".

It's harder to identify when one should engage in original meta-level thinking. If you try to use the outside view, and recognize thinking patterns that can be treated on the meta-level, you most likely end up doing what I described above. If you can recognize a thinking pattern it means you've seen it (at least) a few times before, and probably know how to deal with it.

One could also approach this decision using a coarser outside view. You could ask yourself:

• Generally, how much more productive am I when I go meta? How about when I go meta more than once?
• Does going meta tend to be productive in this large class of problems? (i.e. in household problems, or in math problems)