Group rationality diary, 10/1/12

cata

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of October 1st. 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!

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of October 1st. 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!

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.

I tried using pomodoros for the first time over the weekend. They've been on my to-try list since minicamp, but I never got around to it. The trivial inconvenience of not having a timer seemed to be the biggest cause. On Saturday, I needed to work on some homework that was due today, but I was feeling tired and unmotivated. So I decided to procrastinate by looking for a web-based pomodoro app I could try (here).

Holy crap did it work. Normally when I'm sitting at my computer working on a vaguely difficult problem, like e.g. interpreting some equation (I often write up HW in latex), I quickly find myself on the internet reading mostly useless information. Suddenly I had a Schelling point - every time I tried to click over to Chrome, I just told myself "not in the middle of a pomodoro, wait 10 more minutes and you'll have a break" and that was usually enough.

I didn't strictly abide by the break / work times - often taking a bit longer on my break or my pomodoro in order to finish whatever I was doing, but I don't think that mattered. I also didn't keep track of my "score," e.g. how many pomodoros I'd completed, but it didn't seem important while I doing it, but I'm going to try it out to see if I notice any effect.

Sometimes, it works really well for me, other times it doesn't. Which is kind of my base-line, so my results are "not enough data yet" I guess. I intend to try it for a while longer.

Suggestion: if slacking off while you intendet to work is a problem for you (like it is for me), keep the pomodoro checklist in a google doc, share it with a few people, and record any slacking-off you do.

1[anonymous]14y

I recently took up pomodoros myself. As for sticking with it and keeping it effective, I'm pairing it with Beeminder

4Shmi14y

It had a classic placebo effect for me: seems to work initially, then slowly fades. I stopped using it after a month or so.

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