In the past several years, I've been in different environments:
—Living in a boardinghouse in DC with people who I didn't really know. This was alright for happiness, but horrible for productivity because I had no social motivation to get anything done, and it turns out humans are social animals.
—Living with my parents in Boston. This was better for productivity, since they were interested in what I was doing with my time and my progress towards my goals, but reporting my progress wasn't exactly fun and it caused tension in the relationship.
—Living in the Boston rationalist house with half a dozen friends. This had the same benefits of talking about goals and getting social points for making progress. The dynamic felt a lot better because I was interacting with peers instead of parents, and it was easier to vanish into my room for a couple days when I wanted to. Also having house coworking or strategizing events is a big plus. A majority of residents (possibly all) had a similarly positive experience.
—Living and working with Leverage Research in Oakland. Like the above, but more.
To answer your demographic questions, I'm 25 years old, originally from Boston, and think the introvert/extrovert model is extremely silly but will answer "mostly introvert" in the spirit of not screwing up your data.
I've slowly come to have a strong belief that the main problem with people I know who are suffering, or failing to achieve their goals, is living with fewer tribal affiliates than they "need".
This seems plausible.
What I want to get people to discuss here is obvious given the title. What has been their experience regarding who and specially how many people they live with, and how that impacted their motivation and happiness.
I don't want to peruse papers on happiness and productivity, because I'm particularly interested in anecdotal tales coming from a Lesswrong sample.
Three pieces of information seem relevant, so if that is okay with whoever comments, I'd ask people to tell us if they consider themselves introverts (recharge batteries by being alone) extroverts, or both. As well as their age and hometown.
The reason I want to have a fuller understanding of this is that I've slowly come to have a strong belief that the main problem with people I know who are suffering, or failing to achieve their goals, is living with fewer tribal affiliates than they "need". And that belief could very well be false or biased.
I'm equally interested in what people think in general about their friends' living situation: "Most of my friends who live with friends experience such and such emotion, but the ones who live with family experience such and such problems with motivation"
as I am in personal experiences.
Following a suggestion about creating topics like this before, I'll put my own case in the comments.