Group Rationality Diary, November 16-30

therufs

This is the public group rationality diary for November 16-30.

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: November 1-15

Next diary: December 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group rationality diary for November 16-30.

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: November 1-15

Next diary: December 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

I went back to scheduling my life using my phone. It's basic stuff like workout or clean on this day at this time. This has been an utter failure so far. The reason I originally stopped using the schedule is because, after some initial success, I wasn't following it then either. I need to get into a habit of following it, but breaking the schedule when I've only barely started is a really bad sign.

What happened those times you ignored your schedule? There can be very different breakpoints in a system like this.

Do you break away to do other things that need to be done but didn't get to schedule properly?
Are you neglecting to check the schedule?
Is acknowledging the schedule turning into an ugh field?
Are finding the scheduled item is not something immediately actionable?
Are the scheduled items taking longer/shorter than expected?
Are you constantly finding excuses (even good ones) not to do the scheduled thing?

Some subset of the above? Without ... (read more)

1kalium12y

I'm having good results from using HabitRPG for this sort of thing. Your character gets experience points as you accomplish various daily, weekly, or one-off tasks, and it also records how many times in a row you've successfully done each recurring task. It's kind of silly, but I really feel good about my 37-day streak of actually eating breakfast.

3philh12y

This might be true, but it isn't obvious; and if it is true, it isn't obvious that this works as an object-level goal. (By that I mean that in order to start following your schedule, you probably don't want to apply willpower towards following your schedule. Other things you might want to try include: schedule things differently; schedule different things; change how you feel about the things you have scheduled.)