I've been trying to install a five-second-level habit of naming three examples, at least internally, whenever I catch myself making a general statement of any significance. This is intended as a check against accidentally spewing bullshit. It's been semi-successful. That is, I've mostly-successfully installed the habit. But I've found, to my great aggravation, that a lot of the time I can't name three specific examples promptly. Even for statements I'm quite confident of, such as generalizations of my own personal experiences, memory searches will return a hazy sensation of "I've run into phenomena X a lot" without returning any actual specific occurrences of X.
I find this frustrating.
In an unrelated effort, I've started getting up well before it's time to go to the office. Work leaves me mentally useless by the time I get home, and so I'm inevitably resentful that so many of my days are pre-shot for any purpose I care for. (e.g. personal projects) I'm hoping I can get more use out of more days this way.
I've woken up early for months now for the same reason, and it works great. The problem is, it somewhat screws up my social life.
I wonder if there's things you could pre-emptively do at work to not feel tired afterwards. Maybe cut down caffeine intake and only use it just before leaving work? Or take a nap at work.
This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for November 16-30 (that I've now fished out of my drafts folder, *cough*.)
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