This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of July 23rd. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
- Established a useful new habit
- Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief
- Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations
- Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior
- Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something
- Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life
- Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you
- Tried doing any of the above and failed
Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.
Thanks to everyone who contributes!
Does anybody have a good Emacs setup they would like to share? I really need to give mine an overhaul, and I'm looking for ideas.
About two weeks ago I implemented Workrave pomodoro timer recommended in a previous rationality diary thread with a 25/5 split. This has been a fantastically good decision.
What's amusing to me is that the pomodoro timer has improved my productivity way out of proportion to what I expected. I'm very prone to investing lots of time and energy into productivity gizmos which ultimately don't pay off. The Workrave timer is very simple and works immediately. I simply find that it's very easy to focus for a 25 minute chunk when I know I'm going to take a 5 minute walk shortly.
Additionally, Nozbe (a GTD implementation) continues to be a good investment. I find myself still failing to sufficiently granularize large tasks. Nozbe ends up not really helping much when it comes to taskifying large projects, but helps a lot with remembering to return emails, remembering to buy birthday cards, acting on important thoughts that happen to hit me in the wrong context, and other inherently "small" items.
META: So, this is probably the third rationality diary entry of mine which mentions Nozbe, and I realize this may be annoying or redundant to other people. From my point of view, I think it's potentially valuable to track how a person uses a tool over time, rather than merely hearing an initial gushing endorsement followed by silence. Do y'all want me to shut up about Nozbe or should I keep providing a record of my experience?
I am also using Nozbe, though I wish it would let you create sub-projects.