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Metus comments on What are good topics for literature review prizes? - Less Wrong
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Hm. We are principally interested here, practicality-wise, in akrasia and productivity. I don't know of any particular area of the akrasia literature that hasn't been discussed thoroughly here. Productivity-wise, software tools outside psychological training like dual n-back and spaced repetition tools like Mnemosyne/Anki already have their coverage. Nootropics are a common interest, but the major ones seem covered either by Wikipedia or my own stuff.
Maybe there's an area of psychology missing? For example, I've wondered how well-researched the Big Five personality factors are, and in particular, what the research on Conscientiousness says. I've collected a number of citations on it, but this has always been half-hearted. Which is too bad, because Conscientiousness seems like a major factor that LWers lack, and is pretty closely related to akrasia. Lukeprog claimed there was research into how to improve it in one of the reviews he cited, but I couldn't refind it.
As a principle, things you can change are much more interesting for a literature review. For nootropics the change in IQ or other measure of even task-specific ability would be interesting to quantify. Similarily, personality traits and their payoffs are only interesting if is possible to change ones own personality.
Don't neglect the usefulness of understanding personality traits for the purpose of predicting the behaviors of others.
You are right. Though in this respect any connection between ability and any trait is interesting.
Very true, it's easier to make things pan out that way; 'understanding to predict', as wedrifid suggests, is real and valid, but harder to be measure so you know you are not wasting your time. Conscientiousness may or may not be a thing you can change, see the last line.
Maybe that in itself would be an interesting topic: What you can actually change about yourself. Can you change your appearance? Your tastes? Your personality?
Of course it is easier to change and measure short-term effects such as a change in habits. Do any other, similarily easy to measure short-term changes and benefits come to mind? Any of those would be suitable for a literature review.
Your review of spaced repetition falls in this category for example. You can change how you learn and this change, especially the change in what you retain can be measured and has been measured.