Group rationality diary, 11/28/12

cata

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of November 27th. 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!

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.

(Sorry for being a day late on this one, life is really full of things lately!)

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of November 27th. 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

Thanks to everyone who contributes!

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.

(Sorry for being a day late on this one, life is really full of things lately!)

I realized that my success or failure at work does influence what I do in my free time more than I expected... even after I took measures to prevent it.

Specifically, in recent months I have built a habit to take a 20-minutes nap when I return home from the work. I set the alarm clock and go to bed; sometimes I sleep, sometimes I don't, but the rule is to forget the work and just daydream either about something pleasant or about my long-term goals, and what I could do in the remaining part of the day. Originally, this was supposed to be a preparation for later polyphasic sleep experiment; later I decided against polyphasic experiments, but I kept this habit as helpful. It does really reset the brain, and the rest of the day feels like a micro-weekend.

Anyway, I keep statistics of what I do each day, as a result of my self-improving attempt designed at the Rationality Minicamp. Essentially a list of "yes or no" questions (did I exercise on given day? did I meditate? did I learn something new? did I write an article for my blog? did I avoid eating sugar? did I avoid procrastinating on internet? did I socialize with my friends? etc.), and the daily score is the number of "yes" answers. -- And I have noticed that during the weeks where I have some problems at work my "daily score" is visibly lower than during the weeks where the work is OK. The difference is cca 3 points per day of a bad week versus 4.5 points per day of a good week. (Note: My success in work is not included in the score. This is the impact my success in work has on things I do outside of my work.)

Obvious or not? It feels likely that success at work improves one's mood, and a good mood is generally helpful for winning. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't make specific predictions of a kind: "I am more likely to exercise in the evening if I spend my work day coding in Java than if I spend my working day trying to fix a bug in NetBeans." But it seems to be true.

EDIT: This result is not completely experimentally proven: I keep records about my "daily score", but don't keep records about my success at work. There is a chance this is just a convenient excuse. However, if this is true, it gives me some insight into the mystery of "willpower". The hypothesis is that if I feel successful at doing X, I will have more "willpower" to work at Y. That the success seems to radiate into other areas of life, and so does failure. Instrumentally: "If you want to fix Y, fix X, even if there is there is no relation between X and Y other than that X makes you feel helpless and you can fix X now."