The idea for this came to me when reading nyan_sandwich's "An akrasia case study." I outlined the idea itself in my comment in that thread.
So here's the plan:
- In a comment reply to this, describe a specific instance of akrasia in your own life. Place an emphasis on the specificity. Focus on a specific task, either positive (i.e., that you judge to be good to do but self-sabotage from doing, like writing a paper) or negative (i.e., that you know you shouldn't do but do anyway, like buying more Frosted Flakes for breakfast and continuing to eat them). The more specific, the better.
- You can share multiple instances, but please create new comments for each.
- If you tried an anti-akrasia technique in this specific context, explain what you did and what effect it had. If you have some way in which you measured its effects objectively, please share that. If not, though, that's okay; we can still learn something from what various attempts to tackle different manifestations of akrasia feel like from the inside. The goal here is not to propose solutions; instead, it's to see what different things that feel like solutions seem to do to different kinds of akrasia. So even failed attempts are useful.
- If you tried multiple approaches or if your approach requires some explanation, you might consider describing it and its effects in a reply to your description of the instance of akrasia you applied it to.
Let me emphasize one more time that we are not looking for solutions in this thread. Please don't give each other suggestions! If you think you're on to something hot in terms of the "kicking" aspect of the Art, please show us with a description of how the technique worked for you on a specific instance - but share the instance first. The goal here is not to demonstrate that you have a clever anti-akrasia technique. The goal instead is to see what different instances of akrasia and attempts to tackle it actually look like.
If at all possible, please share both successes and failures. This is especially helpful if we can see successes and failures of the same technique. This helps to balance out positive bias and gives us a better idea of the parameters within which different techniques work. Be especially wary if you have a favorite anti-akrasia technique because of the subconscious desire to attempt to change reality by pretending your favorite technique is actually perfect. If you do have a favorite technique, please actively seek out its true weak points.
Let's crack this thing!
INSTANCE: Applying for academic jobs
I'm in graduate school finishing a doctorate. Last fall (2010) I thought I was going to finish, so I started looking around for jobs. At the time my advisor wasn't sure whether I would graduate that academic year (by summer 2011), so he was hesitant to write a letter saying I'd have my Ph.D. by fall 2011. He decided in December that I wasn't going to finish that year. But in the course of negotiating with him and looking for jobs, I realized that the rhythm for the academic job search required me to put my materials together sometime around September to October the year before the job would start and then send out applications from about October through December.
Fast-forward to this year. Throughout the summer I kept thinking I had plenty of time to work on my job application materials, so I didn't put much effort into them. Around September I started considering getting to work on it "soon." (For those who don't know this: Academic job searching requires putting together a curriculum vitae (kind of like a resumé on steroids), a description of current and planned future research, a description of one's teaching philosophy, a cover letter repeating much of the same content, and usually somewhere around three letters of recommendation.) I was also preoccupied with putting material together for a conference of sorts where I'd be presenting a small chunk of my dissertation work.
At the conference in early October, I overheard some other people talking about their submissions to a conference in Portland in February. One of the ways one gets jobs in my field is by going to conferences and making social impressions while showing off that you can do research. This particular conference is right in my area of specialization, so I felt a thrill of panic for having not attended to this sooner. I immediately put together a submission for a presentation. That took me until mid-October.
That's when I finally started putting my job application materials together. I figured it would take me a weekend to get it all together, and then trying to account for the planning fallacy I gave it a week. It actually took me a solid week of ignoring my dissertation just to get the curriculum vitae put together. (It's quite amazing how mind-numbing that process is!) I also ended up trusting my department's wall of job postings to do my basic search because I felt like I no longer had the time to figure out how to do the search myself.
Most job announcements started reviewing in November, though, so I figured I still had a chance to get most of my job applications in. I talked to three people about getting letters of recommendation, one of whom wanted my CV, research statement, and a set of reminders about work we had done in the past. I decided to get my advisor's feedback on the CV and research statement before giving them to the letter-writer. (It's pretty typical that the advisor needs to approve these things before one submits them.) He, however, took his time (as I would have known he'd do if I had bothered to reflect on it), and as a result I wasn't able to give the letter-writer her materials until late November - at which point most of the application deadlines had passed.
In retrospect, what I should have done is asked multiple people for letters of reference, started working on the job application material in the summer, and given the thorough letter-writer an early draft of the materials she had asked for right away.