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gothgirl420666 comments on Open thread, August 5-11, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Is there a name for the bias of choosing the action which is easiest (either physically or mentally), or takes the least effort, when given multiple options? Lazy bias? Bias of convenience?
I've found lately that being aware of this in myself has been very useful in stopping myself from procrastinating on all sorts of things, realizing that I'm often choosing the easier, but less effective of potential options out of convenience.
Laziness can sometimes be a form of decision paralysis - when you're facing a new and difficult problem and not sure how to approach it, your brain sometimes freaks out and goes to default behavior, which is to do nothing. That's why it's important to make plans and pre-commitments.
That was a huge source of akrasia for me. I fight by dividing the task ahead into very tiny subproblems ("chunk down", in NLP parlance) and then solving them on at the time. Then it's easy to get into flow...