Group Rationality Diary, October 1-15, plus frequency poll

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for October 1-15.

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.

New this month: If you have preferences about the future frequency of rationality diary posts, please express them in the poll below!

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

Immediate past diary: September 16-30

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for October 1-15.

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.

New this month: If you have preferences about the future frequency of rationality diary posts, please express them in the poll below!

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

Immediate past diary: September 16-30

Rationality diaries archive

I have a notetaker device that was out of date when I got it in 2006, but since it's primary functions are as a word processor, calculator, and occasional calendar/alarm/stopwatch, that isn't too problematic. The problem is that the battery stopped holding a charge last year, and I haven't been able to replace it. My productivity has declined noticeably since then. It also seems to lend itself to working with external distractions: when I was attending college, I could get quite a lot done during classtime without it negatively impacting academic performance, it made going places or watching TV with family both tolerable and not-useless, and is much better for working with music than my laptop.

I decided to try using it this morning, but that did not go as planned. This evening, people left the house with comedy central playing (the Stewart-Dawkins interview replayed), so I decided to try bringing it out again. And this worked pretty much perfectly, even after people returned.

I should fix that battery. The company that sold the device will do replacements for prices several times that of batteries with the same specs on the internet, but I don't know if the battery is too unique for random internet batteries to work (and I can't find a screwdriver). This should not be a difficult problem. That it is says more about me than the device/battery/company.