I have two reasons not to use your system:
One: If you're committed to doing the action if you yourself can find a way to avoid the problems, then as you come to such solutions your instinct to flinch away will declare the list 'not done yet' and add more problems, and perhaps problems more unsolvable in style, until the list is an adequate defense against doing the thing.
One way to possibly mitigate this is to try not to think of any solutions until the list is done, and perhaps some scope restrictions on the allowable conditions. Despite this, there is another problem:
Two: The sun is too big.
I do not exercise.
(Caveat: I will refrain from taking any advice that would lead to me starting to significantly exercise until I have a diagnosis and a treatment plan of my apparent heart condition, which doesn't indicate it would be unsafe or otherwise a medically bad idea. I'd be really surprised if my doctor told me not to exercise, but in case she does I want to wait and make sure that my body is really lying to me when it says "don't do that, bad things will happen".)
Reasons (and existing known routes around each):
Sweat is horrible, and I overheat too easily. (Swimming gets around these; outdoor exercise in cold weather, interestingly, does not.)
Sunshine is horrible (and other environmental issues). (Anything indoors or at night gets around the sunshine thing. Other environmental issues are mostly limited to smelly gyms and excessively humid indoor pool facilities. Anything outdoors and at night and in nice weather gets around this.)
Many forms of it are financially costly (equipment, facility use). (Going for walks does not have this problem.)
It is boring. (When I tried jujitsu, it did not have this particular problem. Merely being able to listen to
It seems to me as if some bodyweight strength training exercises might not trigger any of these problems. I would suggest very small sets of comparatively high-load exercises, e.g. work your way up to one-legged squats, one-armed pushups, and chinups if you have a suitable thing to hang from or are willing to get a chinup bar (I sometimes do chinups on the metro). If you are interested I can give you some details on how to work your way up to these exercises, since many people are not initially strong enough to do them (I sure wasn't!).
Sweat: Short sets don't give you much of an opportunity to overheat or sweat. Also, with bodyweight exercises, you can do them at home and take a cool shower/bath immediately afterwards. (By the way, do you hate sweating, or do you hate being sweaty? I am assuming the latter for now.) You could even do the pushups in a cool bath to get some of the advantages of swimming.
Environmental Issues: You can do this at home and indoors.
Cost: Only the time investment, plus (optionally) the cost of a chinup bar.
Boring: This type of exercise does not take very long, so you won't have much time to be bored. Not very long means 5-10 minutes total, a few times a week. You don't even have to do it all in one session, you can take a minute at a time through the day.
As a bonus, strength training can make other sorts of physical activity less unpleasant, since you will be operating at much less than capacity.
I have tried to be reasonably concise here so as not to drown you in intimidating details and caveats, please let me know if anything is unclear and I can expand on it or try to say it another way. I included common names for some of the more unusual exercises, to aid you in Googling, but am happy to try to explain anything that is not obvious to you.
I hope this helps, but please let me know either way, as it will help me give better and more relevant advice in the future. Especially anything that doesn't work for you.
I am near-certain I do not currently have the strength necessary to do anything you have listed. The working up to it must also meet the criteria, but do tell.
Basically the idea is to do exercises that are less intense versions, and to do negative reps. Try doing the hardest exercise you can do. If at some point in the day you can't do it anymore then move one notch down. Once you can do 5 sets of 5 repetitions each in a day, try the next level up (no reason you shouldn't be ambitious and try it earlier if you feel like it).
Less intense versions of the 1-armed pushups
Regular pushups
Regular pushups with 1 leg off the ground
Ab pushups, sometimes called Superma
I wish to make the world a place where "Sunshine and sweating feel awful, so I'm not taking your advice" elicits the same reaction as "Putting my hand on a hot stove feels awful, so I'm not taking your advice", rather than being told to man up and being psychanalyzed by strangers.
I'm going to start with the subset of the world named Less Wrong.
I think this conversation could use a dose of alternate perspective, and this seems like as good of a spot to drop it as any; zaogao, this is not directed at you personally.
LessWrong as a community makes a point, a lot of the time, of accepting a rather large amount of variance in its members' values. Except, some of us seem to be better than others at noticing when values-variance is relevant to the conversation at hand. It seems to me that a failure to notice that that's relevant is the bulk of the problem, here.
Alicorn has made it pretty clear, as far as I can see: Given the choice between a lifestyle in which she sweats regularly, and a lifestyle where she's less fit and more prone to health problems, she really does prefer the latter - that's what her values specify. She's not in denial about it, she's not complaining about having to make the choice, she's not making drama. All she's doing is describing the situation, pointing out the options she knows about, and asking if anyone knows of options that she's missed. This shouldn't be a problem, as far as I can tell: Looking for third (or fourth, or fifth) options is a very LessWrong kind of thing to do. But even if we collectiv...
I should play games (of the video, card, or board variety.) I get told this a lot, by very intelligent people.
Reasons I don't:
I already have a hard time getting work done while having a side project, a relationship, and imperfect discipline; I dread adding another hobby.
It actually takes a lot of work to get good at a game, and if I'm putting in work, I want to have something to show for it.
Certain kinds of video games (i.e. Portal) are viscerally unpleasant for me; I'm not used to navigating a 3d virtual environment since I never played video games
Benefits of playing games:
See also: http://www.tastyhuman.com/10-benefits-of-playing-video-games/
Role-playing games can also have some of the same benefits (albeit much less salient) as improv theater and rejection therapy. Which is more fun, getting rejected by a dozen people you don't know to have a conversation, or having your level eight human rogue get rejected a dozen times in a bar?
For all of the above, however, YMMV.
Procrastination is making me miss a lot of opportunities. Up to and including (in progress): having a chance at anchoring myself in a first-world country vs blowing it and having to return to eastern Europe.
Barriers:
High initial anxiety when sitting down to start a project. Related to #2.
Low confidence in own abilities after so many mediocre last-minute solutions in the past.
No social support - no friends interested in programming.
Additional anxiety due to being behind schedule with 3-4 items - article, internship work, internship report, learning
Just as an aside and a note to all giving the recommendations and advice... focus on First Order Optimal Strategies.
Sure self-editing to not have your rejections be rejections anymore, by training the habit over the course of a few months to a year or more MAY work, and may work very well. But it's not the strategy that has the lowest skill/effort input to highest power/effect output ratio.
Suggestion: If you have financial constraints for your solution, be specific.
If there's a known cost for a solution, check financial constraints to make sure the cost doesn't exceed them.
Things I really need to do but can't seem to make myself do them:
there are clothes rotting in my washing machine. I had a migraine and couldn't hang them up, and the migraine lasted about a week, and now there's fungus growing on them. I've read online that this can be fixed by washing them 3-4 times and then hanging them in the sun to dry. Adding vinegar to the washing machine can help. The washing machine is right next to the bathtub, and I can't bathe properly because the smell is overpowering and makes me dizzy and light headed.
1) I'm still sore and co...
There are clothes rotting in my washing machine. I had a migraine and couldn't hang them up, and the migraine lasted about a week, and now there's fungus growing on them. I've read online that this can be fixed by washing them 3-4 times and then hanging them in the sun to dry. Adding vinegar to the washing machine can help. The washing machine is right next to the bathtub, and I can't bathe properly because the smell is overpowering and makes me dizzy and light headed.
Do not fuck around with possibly-toxic fungus. The fact that the fumes have immediate negative effects strongly suggests that it's toxic. Do not ignore sudden health problems that coincide with the appearance of mold in your environment, especially not ones as severe as a perpetual migraine. Those clothes are probably not salvageable, but they should be the least of your worries. You need outside help cleaning your apartment, and you need it yesterday. You also need a physical.
More information about your situation might be useful here. My first suggestion is to see if you can find someone local to help you with it (friends, family), but that seems like an obvious enough solution that I expect that if it were that simple you'd have done it already. So, what resources do you have available?
I eat less fruit and vegetables than I should. This seems to mostly or entirely be because I don't reliably alieve that they're food.
This manifests in a few different ways: When shopping, most fruit or veggies or fruit- or veggie-containing things don't register as things that I might consider buying. When choosing something to eat at home, those things don't register as things that I might want to eat. For most fruit and a few veggies, once they're actually in front of me in a ready-to-eat form (which does not include whole fruit), I'll eat them, but gett...
I should go to more parties and events, and introduce myself to more people, so that I can 'network' and build a base of contacts who might be useful in the future. People who tell me this: my boyfriend.
Reasons I don't: a) I don't actually have all that much fun at parties, compared to the amount of fun I have, for example, singing in church. b) Parties with people in my age group almost always involve alcohol, and it's extremely boring to be the only sober person at a party, and alcohol is expensive. c) I am a morning person, emphatically not a night per...
I think you are thinking about the wrong kinds of parties. In fact, you are solving the wrong problem. If your goal is to network and meet people, there are much much better ways of doing that than going out to parties. Go to local clubs/meet-ups (chess, book, poker, sewing, toast masters, etc...). Meet more people through other people you already know, and through workplace if you have a job. You said you like going to church, do activities with those people. You'll meet new people there. See what fun things they do. Go to those things too.
I probably am solving the wrong problem...in fact, I'm solving someone else's problem. I'm solving the problem that my boyfriend likes going to parties and meeting people, and thinks that networking is an indispensable part of university life, and feels his social status increase if he can bring his girlfriend along, suitably dolled up, and show her off. Except that I consistently mess with his plans by not wanting to dress up and by not enjoying parties all that much. I'm pretty happy with the current rate at which I'm meeting people through work (I work at a pool and know pretty much every member who comes in during mornings), school, church, activities like taekwondo, and LessWrong meetups. Granted, most of them aren't my age, but compared to older people, people my age tend to be less interesting anyway.
It seems like giving your boyfriend what he wants and spending time in a way that is enjoyable to you are things that could be optimized separately.
For example you could show up briefly, armed with an excuse to leave early, at some time you determine in advance. That way he gets to show you off and you don't have to stick around at a party that bores you.
This thread is getting long enough to be a little inconvenient to monitor, though the bright green edges on new comments help a lot.
Maybe it's time for a True Rejection Challenge, part 2.
Something I wish I did at least as much as recommended (in Brazil, which is, say, half USA's recommendation): Worry about $$$
I avoid this worry because: 1) Getting $$ seems boring compared to going to the movies, reading less wrong, creating transhumanist charities. 2) It seems to be a lottery, where the few get a lot. Not being motivated for this decreases my odds. So my odds are really low. 3) Grown up as the son of a motivated money-maker, and have seen what it takes to get his share. Not willing in the least to pay the price. 4) Not an ambitious i...
I should stop smoking.
1) I am addicted to nicotine.
2) Nicotine patches are expensive, cigarettes are very cheap.
3) cigarettes supress my appetite and they are cheaper than food. I can smoke 25 cigarettes for the cost of a loaf of bread. it takes me more than a day to smoke that many. if i want to buy things to put on the loaf of bread, we're up to about 3-4 days worth of cigarettes.
4) if i quit smoking i would have more money for food, but not so much more as to make a huge difference.
5) smoking is my only vice and my only luxury.
6) I currently have a 0% c...
7) i'm in my mid 20s, so the health risks aren't looming large yet. i can quit later.
Um - I'm afraid I have to tell you that "later health effects" are not caused by smoking later in life. They are caused by smoking early in life... and then getting older (whether or not you quit).
You can improve your chance of recovering from the damage you are doing by quitting right now.
As a frequent health-campaign in Aus tells us "every cigarette is causing you damage"
I've been told that I ought to visit out-of-state more often than I do. My preference is to do it about 0 times a year, but I end up doing something or another about once a year. Now I've got family and friends asking me to go to about a dozen various locations for various visits and vacations.
Reasons for not doing this thing:
I don't eat enough vegetables or protein.
1) Vegetables and meat are expensive and are generally not in my budget.
2) I don't like the way I feel after eating meat. I find my thoughts are slower and my stomach feels slightly queasy.
3) Beans take forever to cook. Even if I soak them overnight. Canned beans are expensive.
4) When I buy food, I tend to try to eat as little of it as possible to make it last longer. When I do this with vegetables, they go off and have to be thrown away. But it's so hard to make myself eat now when I could eat later. I know that I'...
most ingredients for cooking don't keep for more than a day or two, even in the fridge. milk, bread, veggies, leftovers, they all go bad
If milk goes bad after a day or two no matter when you open it, you might have a malfunctioning refrigerator.
If milk is OK until a day or two after you open it, you might have a dangerously elevated level of airborne microorganisms.
Get protein from non-meat sources. Consider, in particular, eggs. Monitor the sales at your grocer of choice; if they have a free loyalty program fill out their form and take their junk mail to get in on that.
See above
Buy canned beans in large amounts when they are on sale. Or, consider trying to make a deal with a friend or neighbor where you split batches of beans and only have to do cooking some of the time.
This should admit of self-modification. If you know your food will go off if not eaten, there is no waste or "not lasting longer" associated with eating it before that time. But perhaps you need to work around it instead...
Heartburn can be medicated. If you can't afford to get that checked out or afford the meds, eat around it...
I really do recommend eating, but would need to know more about the etiology of the habit before I offered advice on breaking it.
Consider sharing meals with friends/neighbors. Or, get a freezer. Freezers are really useful.
If you can't get a freezer, buy your veggies canned. Many veggies come that way. Cans are smallish.
Consider disposable dishes, or covering your dishes with something like plastic wrap and being ca
I am not signed up for cryonics.
1) I think I can save more lives by being an organ donor. 2) I can't afford it, even with life insurance. 3) If there is a Singularity, I expect it will happen before I die anyway.
I can't actually sign up until I'm 18 even if all these are refuted, but I will precommit to signing up when I'm old enough.
Another thing to think about here: if you save lives by donating your organs, the organs will probably go to elderly people who are not signed up for cryonics, and will probably die in the next few decades regardless. So you will have saved a few decades of infirmity. On the other hand, if you are revived from cryopreservation, you will probably be revived to immortal, healthy life. So, if the Singularity/some other form of immortality does not happen until more than a few decades after your death, you can save more years, with greater average quality of life, by cryopreserving yourself.
ETA: Also, if the people your organs go to are signed up for cryonics, then getting your organs still wouldn't make that much difference to the total number of years they live.
I don't blog as much as I would like to. I would like to blog more because I think it would make me a better writer, because I sometimes have sufficiently interesting thoughts such that I would like to flesh them out in writing and/or be able to share them with others, and because it's a low risk method of decreasing my self-consciousness. Oh and also because sometimes keeping records of what I thought/did at particular times in the past is extremely useful.
Barriers:
1) It feels egotistical/arrogant to think that anyone wants to hear about what I did today ...
I would someday like to be a writer. In no particular order, the reasons I don't typically write.
I should learn to drive and get my license.
Reasons I don't:
I originally took driving lessons in grade 12, when they were competing for my time with homework, working at the pool, scholarship applications, and actual sleep. Being in control of a large, potentially dangerous vehicle, and being clumsy with slow reaction times, was already stressful for me to begin with, and I think I developed a "driving=stress" association that causes mild anxiety every time I think about it, and major anxiety when I actually get in a car.
I don't live at hom
I do not allocate enough time in making the world a better place. In particular, and I will stress only this most important particular, I do not get around doing the bureocratic things that precede execution. I plan, and stop after planning. Ex: I wrote a book but am not getting it published Everyone who meets me think I am awesome and wants to join my project, but my projects don't last enough time before the next project takes over my mind I can't pay with my money for loads of utilitarian stuff because I don't feel safe donating so I'm not actually ou...
Working slower to avoid mistakes. (I don't want to, I'm just told I should.)
I really need to get far more strenuous exercise than I currently do, but I can be very uncomfortable exposing myself to any criticism from people I don't already know. I live on the edge of a village nearby to a woods which I currently walk in occasionally. Other people use it regularly, and as a teenager, I often get the impression they think I'm there to drink or do drugs if I'm there at any time other than approximately three o'clock, when my school gets out, although in fairness drunken teens do litter the area regularly. I often find myself lacking ...
If you can afford it, you may be able to nonverbally signal to onlookers that you are there for Serious Running by showing up in a Serious Running outfit with corresponding accessories.
If you just want to have an excuse to ignore people, the player is superfluous; the earphones are the signaling part.
I too have the seeming common problem of not eating enough vegetables. However I seem to have different reasons from what others have posted.
First, I don't have a car so I tend to need to shop in spurts, vegetables tend not to stay good long enough to get loads of fresh ones. I buy some frozen vegetables but I don't think it's sufficient (or as delicious as I'd like).
Second, I tend to put off preparing vegetables or have only one way of preparing them. Learning to cook new ways, and even cooking things in ways I know, tends to take more time than what I...
I want to lower my "off-topic" Internet usage when I'm on work.
What do I have now:
Why I want to do that? To have more time for my own projects and work.
What's keeping me from doing that:
I would like to go to grad school for physics and philosophy.
The Situation:
I did my bachelors in Economics at a very good American university, but I only did moderately well.
I took mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and wave phenomena. I also took theoretical multi-var, linear algebra, and abstract algebra, basic statistics, econometrics. In philosophy I've only taken a course on Kant's ethics.
The Constraints:
I have not taken quantum mechanics, statistical thermodynamics, or any science-relevant philosophy (i.e. metaphysics, epistemology, philo
I cannot wake up on time for things more than 80% of the time even once my circadian rhythm is set in place. Ive tried alarm clock in the closet>two alarms everything my body always seems to bypass the issue. Does anyone have some methods i may not have tried yet?
I am mildly malnourished. I am far too thin for my height/age and I do not eat in sufficient volume or sufficiently healthily.
Cost is the major prohibiting factor. I live at home, but I pay for most of what I consume. (Breakfast/lunch.) I am working full time, saving for college.
Food preparation in advance is an option, but I tell myself I don't have the time to do so. Plus buying pre-prepared food is easier and I lack the motivation to make food if I can just buy it.
If I try to prohibit myself from spending (leaving my money/debit card in my car or at hom...
Donating to chairty*: My mum says I'll need the money myself later, and I heuristicaly don't trust myself to make financial decisions due to mental health issues. On one hand, I don't trust her to know the value of efficient charity thou, and I don't really have any good grasp of what I'd need money for, on the other hand I don't really have any good grasp of what I'd need money for and she seems to and come with all these things about survival and education and debts and stuff when I ask.
*Given that I donate to charity I'll donate all of it to SIAI, but that's not obviusly relevant here.
EDIT: decided i had revealed a lot more abaut myself in this thread and since it's no longer active I'm redacting a lot of stuff.
I should have more IRL social contact, especially in some larger group.
1) (this is the main one) There is none to have any social contact WITH. If not for the very low prior I might think there simply isn't a single interesting person within a 100 mile radius from here. I don't think I could say I live in the middle of nowhere, but it certainly feels like it. Maybe it's unreasonable to expect the same quality as online in a much...
I think I should be less secretive and try to let other people know about problems before coming up with a solution on my own more often. All of my attempts to come up with a specific scenario to mention in this post already violates the tendency which I am trying to eliminate. It is a vicious cycle. I suspect this post may have been pointless...
I think I should be less secretive and try to let other people know about problems before coming up with a solution on my own more often. All of my attempts to come up with a specific scenario to mention in this post already violate the tendency which I am trying to eliminate. It is a vicious cycle. I suspect this post may have been pointless...
Duplicate, with a suggestion for the next set of changes: Have what is written in the comment disappear after it is submitted.
Name something that you do not do but should be told you ought...
Nada, I am already told enough, more than I can handle.
Name something that you do not do but wish you would be told you ought...
I wish more people would just tell me to relax and have some fun (people with arguments in favor of doing so).
Name something that you do not do but should do...
Existential risk mitigation. I don't do it because of uncertainty and psychological distress caused by the fear of having no more time to do what I would like to do based on naive introspection. And...
An exercise:
Name something that you do not do but should/wish you did/are told you ought, or that you do less than is normally recommended. (For instance, "exercise" or "eat vegetables".)
Make an exhaustive list of your sufficient conditions for avoiding this thing. (If you suspect that your list may be non-exhaustive, mention that in your comment.)
Precommit that: If someone comes up with a way to do the thing which doesn't have any of your listed problems, you will at least try it. It counts if you come up with this response yourself upon making your list.
(Based on: Is That Your True Rejection?)
Edit to add: Kindly stick to the spirit of the exercise; if you have no advice in line with the exercise, this is not the place to offer it. Do not drift into confrontational or abusive demands that people adjust their restrictions to suit your cached suggestion, and do not offer unsolicited other-optimizing.
To alleviate crowding, Armok_GoB has created a second thread for this challenge.