Group Rationality Diary, May 16-31

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for May 16-31.

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 cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating!

Next diary: June 1-30

Immediate past diary: May 1-15

Rationality Diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for May 16-31.

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 cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating!

Next diary: June 1-30

Immediate past diary: May 1-15

Rationality Diaries archive

I'm reading Feeling Good by David Burns, and noticed that my expected value of many everyday activities is seriously out of whack with how it actually turns out. I don't have quantified data - yet. I'm starting to log expected value of time usage decisions, and compare with the actual experienced value, in order to calibrate things and hopefully improve my "I really don't want to clean my room even though I feel good about having a clean room and accomplishing stuff".

I suspect that a lot of my miscalibration is a holdover from the adversarial relationship I had with my parents over getting arbitrary tasks done. More specifically, it's an attempt to increase their costs of making me do something (since they don't want to see me unhappy, I can use being whiny or sullen as negotiating leverage). Turns out self-sabotage is an extraordinarily unhelpful habit, but I haven't really had the insight or tools to fix it up until now.

Anyhow, the two things I'm doing are making a daily schedule and comparing plans to actual accomplishments, and comparing predicted

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Group Rationality Diary, May 16-31

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Group Rationality Diary, May 16-31

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