With Alicorn's permission, I'm resurrecting this thread.
I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. Since these tasks are often presented atomically - or, worse, embedded implicitly into other instructions - and it is often possible to get around the need for them, this ignorance is not self-correcting. One can Google "how to deposit a check" and similar phrases, but the sorts of instructions that crop up are often misleading, rely on entangled and potentially similarly-deficient knowledge to be understandable, or are not so much instructions as they are tips and tricks and warnings for people who already know the basic procedure. Asking other people is more effective because they can respond to requests for clarification (and physically pointing at stuff is useful too), but embarrassing, since lacking these skills as an adult is stigmatized. (They are rarely even considered skills by people who have had them for a while.)
This seems like a bad situation. And - if I am correct and gaps like these are common - then it is something of a collective action problem to handle gap-filling without undue social drama. Supposedly, we're good at collective action problems, us rationalists, right? So I propose a thread for the purpose here, with the stipulation that all replies to gap announcements are to be constructive attempts at conveying the relevant procedural knowledge. No asking "how did you manage to be X years old without knowing that?" - if the gap-haver wishes to volunteer the information, that is fine, but asking is to be considered poor form.
I'll start off with one of my own: What kinds of exercise can I do at home (I do have 5- and 20-pound weights), and what are good ways to get motivation to do so regularly?
I was successful in keeping a strict (but light) exercise routine for a year. Here are the main things I think helped me form the habit:
Not worrying about quantifying, or optimizing. I would immediately get into the rabbit hole of analysis, when I knew that any exercise was much better than procrastinating until I found the perfect method. Once the habit is formed, then you can optimize it.
Reduce physical inconveniences to actually exercising. The thought of going to a gym immediately turns me off, so I knew it had to be a home. That meant obtaining equipment. To keep it simple, this consisted of a yoga mat and a resistance band.
Doing it right after waking up. I think this was vital to habit formation, as my mind isn't very active, and it was easy to fall into routine. Only very rarely did I find myself considering not exercising.
Doing it every other day - not too often to get burnt out, and not too infrequently to form the habit. In order to keep a consistent sleep schedule and not have to wake up very early, I alternated morning routines - exercise days and shower days. My workouts weren't intense enough to necessitate a shower immediately after. Also, I worked it in with my intermittent fasting routine on non-exercise days.
Tracking it. Noting days that I exercised did give me a couple of achievement hedons. The effect diminished, but not before the habit was formed.
All that said:
It only took a week-long vacation that disrupted my routine to convince myself that it was a good idea to stop the routine in order to see how it affected me. ...That was about 4 months ago.
I don't think my specific workout had much of an effect on me physiologically. The note above about optimizing after the habit was formed - well, I never took the effort to begin quantifying and tracking detailed progress or optimize the actual workout.
However, I do feel like I've become more stress-able, physically and mentally, so I do plan to restart a routine after holiday vacation.
With Alicorn's permission, I'm resurrecting this thread.
I'll start off with one of my own: What kinds of exercise can I do at home (I do have 5- and 20-pound weights), and what are good ways to get motivation to do so regularly?