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Xachariah comments on Group rationality diary, 8/6/12 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Last month I posted about how I was going to lash myself to the mast and block out all time-wasting websites and delete all games. I'm still at it and there's not much to say aside from a couple updates.
A couple of websites I considered useful actually ended up ballooning their time consumption when I blocked out other time wasting websites. I realized they weren't actually so useful and ended up blocking all of them too except Wikipedia and LessWrong. Internet usage is way down.
Videogame usage has been minimal. Before I deleted all my games I'd already made exceptions for Endless Space and Guild Wars 2 when they came out, if I could last that long. (I really didn't anticipate lasting this long.) I was slightly worried that allowing myself any videogame time would open up floodgates and I'd be back to prior behaviors like an alcoholoc who takes a swig of brandy. But I ended up installing Endless Space, playing it, beating it twice (it's Civ style), then uninstalling it without going onto any other games since. Yay.
Productivity wise, my initial success with Programming, Rosetta Stone, and Creative Writing has faded significantly, but still remains well above baseline. I've found that I'm just not as motivated to get on the computer as I used to be. Productivity in non-computer ventures has skyrocketed. I've been much more diligent about the gym, real world projects, and I've been way more on the ball with cleaning / house upkeep, which is nice. My diligence with Anki is the only sector where my productivity is below when I started, owing to the fact that I spend more time away from the computer now.
But anyhow, the Odysseus Protocol remains a huge success a month and some change later. I've also got a similar secret project I'm one week into, but I'll wait at least another week before I post on that.
Regarding Anki, do you have an iPhone or Android phone? The Anki app is amazing & my learning after purchasing it shot through the roof. It is so convenient to have all of your flash cards with you all of the time. Aside from planned downtime, there is no downtime. If you have 2 minutes of free time, you have 2 minutes you can spend learning.
No, I do not have a smartphone. I had previously been averse to buying one because I was already using the internet too much. But that state does not currently hold true, and I hadn't re-evaluated my (non)purchase of a smartphone since...
Should I decide get one, I'll definitely grab that app. Thank you.
How difficult is it to make custom Anki sets for the Android app? I'm intrigued, but wary of spending money and then running in to configuration pain.
I have an iPhone and don't know about Anki on Android but this Android Anki app is free and can create & edit decks. It looks like if you want to import a deck you created on your desktop computer, you have to put it on an SD card. (A lot of printers have SD card writers.)
Since the iPhone app is what I use, I'll talk a bit about it. You can create and edit decks on the iPhone app but I only do this if I'm adding one or two cards. (I don't know if you can do images and audio from there.) Mostly I add stuff in the (Linux) desktop app. To sync stuff between the desktop computer and the phone you need a (free) ankiweb.net account. If you want to sync images (including LaTeX) or audio, you'll need a Dropbox account (free for the amount of data you're likely to need to store).
The desktop app can import stuff in tab-separated values format (or comma-separated or a few others). Most of my cards were generated by little one-off computer programs that spat out TSV.
You can also add and edit decks from within the ankiweb.net interface.
Here are some things I use Anki for:
If you haven't already, you'll want to read what Gwern has written about spaced repetition.
Edit: Let me add a warning about something that has bitten me a few times. If you access your decks from multiple devices, or from one device and ankiweb.net, follow this advice about syncing (and, to be safe, avoid having a deck open in two places at once).
You can also sync decks from your ankiweb.net account to the android app.
I haven't used the Android app, but making customs sets is all I do with the iPhone version. You can embed images & audio files very easily and sync everything through Dropbox. You can edit the layout of cards in HTML or even in LaTeX. I am cheap & I was wary of spending the money to buy the app, but I would say it has been one of the best investments I've made in my life.