This is a linkpost for https://markxu.com/if-you-weren't
My friend Buck once told me that he often had interactions with me that felt like I was saying “If you weren’t such a fucking idiot, you would obviously do…” Here’s a list of such advice in that spirit.
Note that if you do/don’t do these things, I’m technically calling you an idiot, but I do/don’t do a bunch of them too. We can be idiots together.
If you weren’t such a fucking idiot…
- You would have multiple copies of any object that would make you sad if you didn’t have it
- Examples: ear plugs, melatonin, eye masks, hats, sun glasses, various foods, possibly computers, etc.
- You would spend money on goods and services.
- Examples of goods: faster computer, monitor, keyboard, various tasty foods, higher quality clothing, standing desk, decorations for your room, mattress, pillow, sheets, etc.
- Examples of services: uber, doordash, cleaners, personal assistants, editors, house managers, laundry, etc.
- You would have tried many things at least one time.
- Examples of things to do: climbing, singing, listening to music, playing instruments, dancing, eating various types of food, writing, parties.
- You wouldn’t do anything absurdly dangerous, like take unknown drugs or ride a bike without a helmet.
- You wouldn’t take irreversible actions if you didn’t know what the fuck you were doing.
- You would exercise frequently.
- Types of exercise to try: climbing, walking, running, soccer, football, yoga, hiking, fencing, swimming, wrestling, beat saber, etc.
- You would reliably sleep 6-9 hours a night.
- Obvious things to try:
- melatonin
- blackout curtains
- putting black tape over LEDs on electronics
- experimenting with mattress, pillow, blankets, sheets, etc.
- blue light blocking glasses
- You would routinely look up key numbers and do numerical consistency checks during thinking.
- You would have a password manager.
- You would invest money in yourself.
- Recall: money can be used to buy goods and services.
- You would use a email’s subject line to succinctly describe what you want from the person.
- For example, if I want to meet with my advisor, I’ll send an email with the subject “Request for Advisory Meeting” or something similar. If I want someone to read a draft of something I wrote, the subject would be “Request for Feedback on <Title>”.
- You would have a good mentor.
- One way to do this is to email people that you want to be your mentor with the subject “Request for Mentorship”.
- You would drink lots of water.
- You would take notes in a searchable database.
- You would summarize things that you read.
- You would have tried making your room as bright as the outdoors.
- You would carry batteries to recharge your phone.
- You would have tried using pens with multiple colors.
- You would read textbooks instead of popular introductions.
- You would put a relatively consistent dollar value on your time.
I’m sure there are more things that I tell people that can be prefaced with “if you weren’t such an idiot…”, but that’s all I got for now.
A post I like by @Mark Xu (who agreed to my crossposting in full).
Some more from me:
- You would make it easier to capture your thoughts.
- Examples: a pocket notebook, taking more voice notes
- You wouldn't keep all your money in your current account.
- You would get help when you were stuck.
Just last week I wrote a post reviewing the evidence on caffeine cycling and caffeine habituation. My conclusion was that the evidence was thin and it's hard to say anything with confidence.[1]
My weakly held beliefs are:
I take caffeine 3 days a week and I am currently running a self-experiment (described in my linked post). I'm currently in the experimental phase, I already did a 9-day withdrawal period and my test results over that period (weakly) suggest that I wasn't habituated previously because my performance didn't improve during the withdrawal period (it actually got worse, p=0.4 on a regression test).
[1] Gavin Leech's post that you linked cited a paper on brain receptors in mice which I was unaware of, I will edit my post to include it. Based on reading the abstract, it looks like that study suggests a weaker habituation effect than the studies I looked at (receptor density in mice increased by 20–25% which naively suggests a 20–25% reduction in the benefit of caffeine whereas other studies suggest a 30–100% reduction, but I'm guessing you can't just directly extrapolate from receptor counts to efficacy like that). Gavin also cited Rogers et al. (2013) which I previously skipped over because I thought it wasn't relevant, but on second thought, it does look relevant and I will give it a closer look.