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David_Gerard comments on Build Small Skills in the Right Order - Less Wrong
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How could we apply this to Akrasia? That is, what small skills can you learn to help you beat procrastination, instead of just setting a big goal like, "Finish every assignment at least two days before it's due."? Here are a couple ideas:
1) Pick single, relatively easy things to stop procrastinating on. For example, errands like doing laundry or getting groceries.
2) Starting every assignment right after you're assigned it. It could just be a little bit, one problem or simply an outline, that would help you break the resistance to starting.
I feel like there's a lot more possible here, but I can't seem to think of skills related to beating akrasia as opposed to just small ways to beat it. Any ideas?
I'm currently thinking about this as well.
For one, I'm trying to get around being tired, so I have started making a list of all activities that might restore my mental energy and began doing trial runs with a scoring afterwards. So for example, I check how awake I currently am (8/10) and then watch TV for 20 minutes and check again (still 8/10). That way, I do 10-20 minute chunks and eventually get a useful list of working techniques.
Another is trial runs. I went through all my reasonably plausible self-help stuff and collected all techniques in a big list ("write down steps while you work", "timeboxing", ...). Then I pick a simple akratic activity and do a short run (at most a few days, often just one <1 hour go) and write down my experience.
I would really love to have something like a skill tree for some of my major goals, like Khan academy's knowledge map. I've tried making some myself, but I didn't really know in advance what kinda stuff should go in there and my attempts all looked like linear chains. Having clear-cut progression standards and a full map from dirt-easy to mastery seems to be a major component for my recent great success at picking up resistance training, but I haven't yet figured out how to transfer it to other skills.