therufs comments on Group Rationality Diary, March 1-15 - Less Wrong
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Based on ill-remembered citations of the efficacy of exercise for improving focus and general mental health, and after a lot of angst about body acceptance, I I reduced trivial inconveniences to working out below the inertia setpoint and started jogging three days a week. (I settled on running after an extended period of never getting around to signing up for hot yoga, crossfit, or a membership to the Y so I could swim, all of which seem more appealing.)
Good outcomes so far: feeling of accomplishment post-workout; feeling of accomplishment when I put on shoes and leave the house (remembering that not long ago I was basically incapable of making myself do anything I found unsavory); getting a lot less winded by minor physical exertion (e.g. walking briskly up a hill or flight of stairs). Meta-good-outcome: practice at finding and focusing on successes for self-motivation.
Waiting for more data: My focus has not yet improved discernibly. To do: self-test whether focus improves globally if I focus on jogging while I'm doing it.
How do you plan to measure focus? Just subjective effects, or are you using QuantifiedMind, or pomodoro success rate, or something?
Good question; I had briefly considered whether "better focus" was actually measurable, then forgot to think about it further.
So now I've thought about it a little further and (maybe there's a bias name for this phenomenon, but) yes, I will be going with subjective effects. It's not clear to me if "focus" has more content than feeling focused, and in either case, what I want is the feeling of being focused -- i.e., an awareness that what's going on in my head corresponds closely to what my memory and senses tell me is going on outside of my head.