This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for October 1-15.
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.
Previous diary: September 16-30
Next diary: October 16-31
To be honest, I started doing this two or three days ago. I'm aware of the possibility of developing tolerance to it, but I couldn't possibly have consumed enough of it so far to start noticing that already. I'll report back in a month or so, but hopefully in the meantime I should be creating habits out of the productive stuff I (finally) feel like doing and transfer some of the impetus to the habituation -- I'm not sure I can quite cure my motivation problem by way of these supplements, although it would be nice not to have to take them every day for the rest of my life!
I don't think it's just placebo, since I am able to feel when the effect wears off... quite conspicuously. I'd be back to feeling like lying in bed all day long, and if anything had been upsetting me shortly beforehand, all the physical sensations of sadness would resurface as if they had been there all along and were just waiting to manifest.
If it is so recent you should consider the possibility that the effect is placebo-like - esp. as you claim your behavior didn't change.