Group Rationality Diary, September 16-30

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for September 16-30.

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!

Immediate past diary: September 1-15

Rationality Diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for September 16-30.

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!

Immediate past diary: September 1-15

Rationality Diaries archive

My experiment in massively curtailing my use of Twitter and Facebook is going well. Objectively, I'm completing more items on my to-do list on a daily basis; subjectively, it appears that my ability to focus has improved, which I'm willing to chalk up to not feeling compelled to check new-message notifications and therefore just not having that distraction, though I would like to be able to measure this in some way.

I was expecting to feel rather cut off from the world, but fortunately this has not been the case. I've been more responsive to more personal methods of contact (email, IM, in-person interaction) that I had previously felt spread too thin to deal with, and this has been hedonically rewarding (e.g., answering email from person asking for some software design advice -> nice thank-you email -> warm fuzzies).

I also started the Tiny Habits course that I saw mentioned in the Useful Habits Repository.

Are you using any tools to keep yourself cut off, or do you merely choose not to visit those sites?