This is a special post for quick takes by Alice Blair. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
People often say "exercising makes you feel really good and gives you energy." I looked at this claim, figured it made sense based on my experience, and then completely failed to implement it for a very long time. So here I am again saying that no really, exercising is good, and maybe this angle will do something that the previous explanations didn't. Starting a daily running habit 4 days ago has already started being a noticeable multiplier on my energy, mindfulness, and focus. Key moments to concentrate force in, in my experience:
Having a friend to exercise with is surprisingly positive. Having a workout tracker app is surprisingly positive, because then I get to see a trendline and so suddenly my desire is to make it go up and stay unbroken.
Many rationalists bucket themselves with the nerds, as opposed to the jocks. The people with brains, as opposed to the people with muscles. But we're here to win, to get utility, so let's pick up the cognitive multiplier that exercise provides.
My model of ideation: Ideas are constantly bubbling up from the subconscious to the conscious, and they get passed through some sort of filter that selects for the good parts of the noise. This is reminiscent of diffusion models, or of the model underlying Tuning your Cognitive Strategies.
When I (and many others I've talked to) get sleepy, the strength of this filter tends to go down, and more ideas come through. This is usually bad for highly directed thought, but good for coming up with lots of novel ideas, Hold Off On Proposing Solutions-esque.
New habit I'm trying to get into: Be creative before bed, write down a lot of ideas, so that the future-me who is more directed and agentic can have a bunch of interesting ideas to pore over and act on.
Interesting class of miscommunication that I'm starting to notice:
A: I'm considering a job in industries 1 and 2
B: Oh I work in 2, [jumps into explanation of things that will be relevant if A goes into industry 2].
A: Oh maybe you didn't hear me, I'm also interested in industry 1.
B: I... did hear you?
More generally, B gave the only relevant information they could from their domain knowledge, but A mistook that for anchoring on only one of the options. It took until I was on both sides of this interaction for me to be like "huh, maybe I should debug this." I suspect this is one of those issues where just being aware of it makes you less likely to fall into it.
My model of ideation: Ideas are constantly bubbling up from the subconscious to the conscious, and they get passed through some sort of filter that selects for the good parts of the noise. This is reminiscent of diffusion models, or of the model underlying Tuning your Cognitive Strategies.
When I (and many others I've talked to) get sleepy, the strength of this filter tends to go down, and more ideas come through. This is usually bad for highly directed thought, but good for coming up with lots of novel ideas, Hold Off On Proposing Solutions-esque.
New habit I'm trying to get into: Be creative before bed, write down a lot of ideas, so that the future-me who is more directed and agentic can have a bunch of interesting ideas to pore over and act on.