Group Rationality Diary, October 16-31

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for October 16-31.

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.

The poll earlier this month seems to be sufficiently in favor of maintaining the current schedule that extra votes are unlikely to change things much, but if you'd really like to register your opinion, you are welcome to do so here.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Immediate past diary: October 1-15

Next diary: November 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for October 16-31.

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 cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Immediate past diary: October 1-15

Next diary: November 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

I moved about two months ago and use that as an excuse to make a number of life changes. This has been going very well. I have in the past been quite bad at making systematic changes to my life, so this has been a refreshing change. Here's the major changes I made:

I run 5 times a week on average instead of once or twice
I write daily on 750words.com and completed last month's challenge to write every day (this site encourages you to write at least 750 words (about three pages) every day of private stream-of-consciousness in a journal).
I reinstated a dental hygiene habit I had let slip years ago
I am going through the hundredpushups.com program
I am keeping better contact with friends I no longer see regularly than I have in the past
I learned more about my financial situation and set up systems to keep better track of all that
I replaced some of the worst pieces of clothing I wore and am trying to look less sloppy in general
I have started taking music lessons for the first time in many years

Habits that I tried to make but have had limited or intermittent success with:

mindfulness meditation
Anki - I maintained this for a while then dropped off again and haven't gotten back in yet. I think I need to put more 'fun' cards in and find a way to get Anki to randomize them across all my decks so that I don't get long strings of hard cards.

It feels really good to make systematic changes. I highly recommend making use of any enforced change like moving or changing jobs to help you make other changes at the same time. I got that suggestion from this site as well, though I can't remember exactly where.

In particular, I do want to advocate for 750words. Somedays I have little to no interesting in writing and little to talk about and end up writing about things of little consequence, maybe just video games or what I had for dinner. But being forced to write is a good habit that allows you to do a lot of self-evaluation in interesting ways. I've used it as a sounding board for a number of decisions since starting it and have come to the decision to start some of these habits based largely off of talking through the costs and benefits to myself on 750 words. I have used it to brainstorm ways to improve aspects of my life, to do put down a short research project investigating some idea, or write down critiques of ideas I've heard, as well as to just put down my thoughts and emotions. I've found that speaking my true feelings is hard and that even writing them down can be difficult - I self-censor all the time apparently. This has given me practice in overcoming that. Try it!

(You can easily write without 750words.com but it does provide some gamification incentives, namely keeping a streak counter to encourage you to not miss a single day. Privacy concerns about putting it all in the cloud are possibly legitimate! And 750words costs $5/month after the first free month.)

There is always the cheap and private option to write 750 words a day in a text processor, and use Beeminder to remind you.