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

Beeminded successfully:

Anki.
Exercise, including pushups. I was also successful doing pushups with the Seinfeld method for about a year before Beeminder.

Beeminded with middling success or unsuccessfully (not totally sure why, but I think these are just harder goals for me):

Hours worked (that I get paid for).
GTD/Remember the Milk tasks.
Hours spent on personal programming projects.

As far as pushups are concerned, they've been successful in the sense that I've been doing pushups regularly for two years and am still going, but -- due to my genes and my current choice not to expend a huge amount of mana points on this goal -- I've been plateaued at 12 to 16 consecutive pushups for a year or more. I second Daniel's recommendation [edit: Daniel being dreeves; also, jetm made the same point] to set a goal that's under the control of you, not of your body's ability to increase its strength.

I have lost money to Beeminder a few times. I think the money helps motivation, though maintaining the graph and "not breaking the chain" are powerful on their own.