You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

MinibearRex comments on Personal Benefits from Rationality - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Celer 12 May 2011 01:08AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (37)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: MinibearRex 12 May 2011 03:41:01AM 9 points [-]

Not proposing solutions for five minutes is something I do every couple of days. I literally have a timer on my watch that is, by default, set to five minutes, and if I am wrestling with a difficult problem, I just sit down, start the timer, close my eyes, and think. In a more general sense, I use techniques like original seeing all the time.

Positive bias is one of the most powerful bits of information I know for determining the truth.

In a general sense, I can't quite stress how much happier I've consistently gotten since I've realized that when I notice I'm not happy, or bored, or whatever, I can just ask myself "What could I be doing right now instead of what I am doing, that I would enjoy more?" This has led me to several impromptu road trips, a number of hiking, biking excursions, etc, and reading several really good new books over the last couple of months alone.

Comment author: atucker 12 May 2011 10:56:09AM 1 point [-]

This has led me to several impromptu road trips, a number of hiking, biking excursions, etc, and reading several really good new books over the last couple of months alone.

Yeah, I think that trying new things is another thing most rationalists should do. I find my self defaulting towards action a lot more often now -- like last night I signed up for a free improv lesson in my area because I thought improv would be useful, and just looked for what I could do about that.

Comment author: MinibearRex 12 May 2011 08:00:31PM 0 points [-]

I want to do that as well. A friend of mine took a class on stand-up comedy and really loved it. We were going to take it together, but the schedule didn't work for me.