Group rationality diary, 5/21/12

cata

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of May 21st. 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 everyone who contributes!

Previously: 5/14/12 (and explanation)

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of May 21st. 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

Thanks to everyone who contributes!

I have recently been trying to mediate my motivation and emotional states using film and television.

I've been watching hardly any TV at all over the past 18 months. I have other things to do, most of what's available isn't very appealing, and anything that does appeal would involve a significant future investment of my time. I do wonder if I'm missing a trick, though.

Fairly recently I noticed that when I do watch television, it has a significant impact on my motivation to do things. If I watch something filled with fit athletic bodies doing fit athletic things, I feel considerably more motivated to go outside and get some exercise. If I watch something filled with smart people doing smart things, I feel more motivated to sit down and study. At the moment, exercise and study are my two biggest akrasia-blocked activities, so significant gains in this regard would be extremely useful.

There are, unfortunately, no television shows to my knowledge about chronicling one's motivation and leisure activities in a quantifiably tractable manner, so I'm not really motivated to do that. Any assessments I make will be purely anecdotal in nature.

I have noticed the same thing about television, in particular with certain programs motivating me to go exercise.

I also noticed, however, that I had to be careful about when I watched TV, because the effect was so strong. Watching The Biggest Loser or youtube Crossfit videos (highly recommended) would get me so excited to workout that it started affecting my bedtime--namely that I wouldn't be able to go to sleep because I was so excited.

I found that I need to watch those programs at least three hours prior to my bedtime in order to be able to fall asleep. The end result is that I now only watch them on weekends or my lunch break.

0erratio14y

Maybe there are some TED talks or videos made by Quantified Self types on Youtube about that.