Rukifellth comments on Group Rationality Diary, November 16-30 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: therufs 19 November 2013 09:01PM

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Comment author: Rukifellth 19 November 2013 10:07:51PM 2 points [-]

I've decided not to have more than 3 tabs open on my internet browser at any given point, as a way of increasing my attention span.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 20 November 2013 12:15:01AM 1 point [-]

I don't understand how that increases attention span.

The trade-off that I see is

  • having multiple sites open which you use often saves open/close times
  • tabs can be ordered by window and tab thus structuring your work
  • having distracting (procrastination sensitive) pages open may cause redirecting attention to these

Maybe you mean the latter?

Comment author: ThrustVectoring 20 November 2013 03:36:34PM 4 points [-]

I think what they're getting at is not letting themselves make the "I'll get back to it later" choice. Either it's important enough to read and take action on now, or it's not important enough. There really aren't many things that are important to do later - and leaving open browser tabs is a pretty bad way to get those things done later.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 20 November 2013 04:31:33PM 1 point [-]

I take that to mean that if you found something on the net but it requires in-depth study or concentration than don't leave the tab open but instead put it on your TODO list (whatever mechanism) and not add another mechanism in the form of random tabs. Just closing and thus forgetting a page discards knowledge (because in all likelihood you will not find the pager later again) and I doubt that discarding knowledge is a good idea.

Comment author: ThrustVectoring 20 November 2013 05:08:46PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I mean. Leaving tabs open is an unorganized and unprioritized way to remind you to do things later (read the tabs and figure out when you want to read the tabs). There's better ways, so you're better off using those instead. Even a notepad file with tasks (URLs to read) is better than leaving tons of tabs open - when you have time and want to read things, you have everything you need right there.

Comment author: Rukifellth 20 November 2013 09:13:12PM *  0 points [-]

Yes.

I take it you've rarely fallen victim to wiki walks and random googling?

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 21 November 2013 12:05:09AM 2 points [-]

Victim? No. I track the time taken and by it and it is seldom 'random googling'.

From an old post of mine on c2 ( http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BreadthFirstLearning ):

I don't use DepthFirstLearning, but rather AstarLearning, meaning, that I have a learning goal in mind all the time (since I can remember) and try to learn everything, that contributes to this goal (minimizes the distance to the goal). The goal is motivated by a curiosity how things work or could be made to work (at an abstract scale, including social problems). The distance to this goal is measured by the usefulness of the knowledge to achieve this. Interestingly I have found, that learning this way all the pieces of information quickly form a coherent picture and fit together. Though I have to admit, that this might be my subjective impression and I hope that this beautiful picture is not an artifact of my mind. As to the personal usefulness of this approach, I think, that it provides me with a clear profile as well as an in-depth expertise in my field.

There are times where I really just read stuff sometimes for the fun of it and sometimes when I am exhausted. But even then I track it and all suring takes about 10% of my online time.

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