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David_Gerard comments on What are you working on? April 2012 - Less Wrong
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This month I'm implementing a self-incentive mechanism to achieve tasks (and vaguely profit if I don't).
Last month I wrote up a list of 30 tasks, one for each day in April. If I fail to use any given day to complete one of my tasks, I move 1/100th (1%) of my previous month's salary to my savings account. This way my future self will either be cleverer (/stronger/more socially talented - due to the nature of the tasks) or richer than would happen otherwise.
Don't forget to report back how it went!
Update!
So, yeah, I overestimated the extent to which I could override a certain lack of intrinsic desire to do things, in addition to having been a little depressed in the first week. I ended up completing 14 of the possible 30 tasks, while failing those that were on average grander undertakings, that would have been diving into hierarchical chunks instead of linear ones. Although I missed some easy ones too, 'go swimming', 'use new sewing machine'.
To improve this, I think I should in advance plan out what sub-tasks each individual task requires, to make the actual task have a smaller at-the-time-of-getting-down-to-doing-it motivational barrier. If there were some cloud web application that could do this (similar to Mind Map software but more convenient to use) that would be useful (I'd been developing one myself but - ironically - lost the motivation).
In total, it was an interesting experiment that would do better with modifications which could probably be enacted fairly easily, and efficiently if done online. I'm not sure of any current social-commitment website that has the flexbility to have let me manage this on my preferred terms. This is something perhaps to look at. I would like to try this again in the future with modifications.