Group Rationality Diary, November 16-30

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for November 16-30 (that I've now fished out of my drafts folder, *cough*.)

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.

The poll earlier this month seems to be sufficiently in favor of maintaining the current schedule that extra votes are unlikely to change things much, but if you'd really like to register your opinion, you are welcome to do so here.

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

Immediate past diary: November 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for November 16-30 (that I've now fished out of my drafts folder, *cough*.)

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: November 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

I think what they're getting at is not letting themselves make the "I'll get back to it later" choice. Either it's important enough to read and take action on now, or it's not important enough. There really aren't many things that are important to do later - and leaving open browser tabs is a pretty bad way to get those things done later.

I take that to mean that if you found something on the net but it requires in-depth study or concentration than don't leave the tab open but instead put it on your TODO list (whatever mechanism) and not add another mechanism in the form of random tabs. Just closing and thus forgetting a page discards knowledge (because in all likelihood you will not find the pager later again) and I doubt that discarding knowledge is a good idea.