Group rationality diary, 7/23/12

cata

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of July 23rd. 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!

Last week's diary; archive of prior diaries.

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of July 23rd. 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!

Last week's diary; archive of prior diaries.

Since 7/9/12 I've been noting distractions from productivity at work. I did keep it up, and I guess now I have enough data to go back, comb through, and look for easy improvements. Just from memory it's pretty clear that I need to a) decrease impulsiveness by making it harder to randomly access the internet, and b) establish a positive habit of switching to doing something useful or at least neutral-but-impossible-to-be-time-consuming as soon as I kick off a 5+ minute build process.

I've failed to swim or bike more. The bike I understand since I had no plan. But I had a plan for swimming and didn't execute.

I vastly reduced the startup cost for hacking on my pet project by taking the time to code up all the parts in a really dumb way that could at least be hooked together. Now I can write improvements without getting bogged down in plumbing.

I used the intuitions of Bayes, specifically of Bayesian Search Theory, to save a bunch of time in a Puzzle Safari (solve puzzles, get locations, search locations for a stamp for your logbook). Arriving "at the top of [a certain] stairwell" I found someone just leaving, frustrated, who said "I think this one's missing, someone else left without finding it too". I immediately scanned the area for easy places to look that weren't obvious places to check, tugged open the fire door, and collected my stamp.

I found an amusing failure mode while hacking my motivation. Rewarding brain states near "desiring to take explicit steps to improve my motivation" with chocolate leads to thinking about ways to explicitly improve my motivation whenever I eat that chocolate which led to Think Of Chocolate (-> Think Of Motivation) -> Reward With Chocolate.

I noticed a part of me that was... disdainful? of a behavior of someone I care about and took steps to ensure they knew and that we would talk about it. This vow is excellent.

6

Group rationality diary, 7/23/12

6

6

6

Group rationality diary, 7/23/12

6

6