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lucidian comments on Checklist of Rationality Habits - Less Wrong
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This may be the single most useful thing I've ever read on LessWrong. Thank you very, very much for posting it.
Here's one I use all the time: When a problem seems overwhelming, break it up into manageable subproblems.
Often, when I am procrastinating, I find that the source of my procrastination is a feeling of being overwhelmed. In particular, I don't know where to begin on a task, or I do but the task feels like a huge obstacle towering over me. So when I think about the task, I feel a crushing sense of being overwhelmed; the way I escape this feeling is by procrastination (i.e. avoiding the source of the feeling altogether).
When I notice myself doing this, I try to break the problem down into a sequence of high-level subtaks, usually in the form of a to-do list. Emotionally/metaphorically, instead of having to cross the obstacle in one giant leap, I can climb a ladder over it, one step at a time. (If the subtasks continue to be intimidating, I just apply this solution recursively, making lists of subsubtasks.)
I picked this strategy up after realizing that the way I approached large programming projects (write the main function, then write each of the subroutines that it calls, etc.) could be applied to life in general. Now I'm about to apply it to the task of writing an NSF fellowship application. =)
It's a classic self-help technique (especially in 'Getting Things Done') for a reason: it works.
For the slightly more advanced procrastinator that also finds a large sequence of tasks daunting, it might help to instead search for the first few tasks and then ignore the rest for now. Of course, sometimes in order to find the first tasks you may need to break down the whole task, but other times you don't.
Hello! I am procrastinating on writing the NSF fellowship! High five!
My current subproblem consists of filling in all the instances of "INSPIRATIONAL STUFF" with actual inspirational stuff, so this particular subproblem is looking pretty difficult. :(
Well your task spec is broken, so no wonder your brain won't be whipped into doing it.
"inspirational stuff" is a trigger for thinking in terms of things like advertising or religious revivals that are emotional grabs which are intended to disengage (or even flimflam) the reasoning faculties. Any rationalist would flinch away.
Re-frame: visualize your audience. You are looking to simply and clearly convey whatever part of their far mode utility function is advanced by the thing you are pushing.
I think the most important aspect of this, for me anyway, is being able to dump most of what you're working on out of your working memory, trusting yourself that it's organized on paper, so that you can free up more brain space to do each of the sub-parts.
See: How and Why to Granularize.
This article would probably benefit from being re-read in smaller chunks over the course of several days. There are a lot of things in it that need to be thought about seriously in order to be effective, and I agree with you about its usefulness.