People have been encouraging me to share my anti-akrasia tricks, but it feels inappropriate to dedicate a top-level post solely to unproven techniques that work for some person and may not work for others, so:
Go ahead and share your anti-akrasia tricks!
Let's make it an open thread where we just share what works and what doesn't, without worrying (yet) about having to explain tricks with deep theories, or designing proper experiments to verify them. However, if you happen to have a theory or a proposed experiment in mind, please share.
Bragging is fine, but please share the failures of your techniques as well – they are just as valuable, if not more.
Note to readers – before you read the comments and try the tricks, keep in mind that the techniques below are not yet proven supported or explained by proper experiments, and are not yet backed by theory. They may work for their authors, but are not guaranteed to work for you, so try them at your own risk. It would be even better to read the following posts before rushing to try the tricks:
Another type of "fear of anti-akrasia techniques" that sometimes occurs, is fear/mistrust of what one's own conscious decision-making process might goof up, if that decision-making process is abruptly given increased power. (This differs from Nominull’s description, because in this scenario you don’t specifically fear surfing the internet less, or any other specific foreseen change; you fear the effects of suddenly removing a system of internal checks and balances, and handing your internal reins over to a new and untested cognitive subsystem.)
Even if your consciously claimed preferences are your “real” preferences (which is not at all obvious, given that claimed preferences may be chosen for the purpose of affecting your self-image or your external social image, rather than for the purpose of choosing between future outcomes)...
... even in this case, there’s the additional problem that your consciously claimed “beliefs” may not be your actual anticipations, and, even if they are your actual anticipations, may be a worse model of the world than is the model implicit in our cultural action-patterns. A person who “believes” her actions will determine whether she spends eternity in heaven or hell, but who has ordinary levels of akrasia and mostly just does what the people around her are doing, is less harmed by her beliefs than she would be if she could actually act take the actions that her stated beliefs and preferences imply. Ditto for a person who believes a strange and unhealthy diet would be beneficial (but can’t seem to fully stick to the new diet), or who believes overconfidently that a particular particular peak oil scenario is “99% likely” (but takes some of his actions in a more ordinary manner anyhow).
If people were easily able to act on their consciously claimed beliefs and preferences, present levels of irrational beliefs might lead to considerably more disruption than they do. Conversely, if people had more reason to trust their “beliefs” and “preferences”, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if akrasia decreased.
This connection is one reason that learning to actually form reasonable beliefs (epistemic rationality), and learning to act in a manner that actually makes sense given one’s beliefs and preferences (overcoming “akrasia”), strike me as linked aspects of a single art.