How to become a PC?

DataPacRat

"Cryonics has a 95% chance of failure, by my estimation; it would be downright /embarrassing/ to die on the day before real immortality is discovered. Thus, I want to improve my general health and longevity."

That thought has gotten me through three weeks of gradually increasing exercise and diet improvement (I'm eating an apple right now) - but my enthusiasm is starting to flag. So I'm looking for new thoughts that will help me keep going, and keep improving. A few possibilities that I've thought of:

Pride: "If I'm so smart, then I should be able to do /better/ than those other people who don't even know about Bayesian updates, let alone the existence of akrasia..."

Sloth: "If I stop now, it's going to be /so much/ harder and more painful to start up again, instead of just keeping on keeping on..."

Desire: "I already like hiking and camping - if I keep this up, I'll be able to carry enough weight to finally take that long trip I've occasionally considered..."

Curiosity: "I'm as geeky a nerd as you can find. I wonder how far I can hack my own body?"

Pride again: "I already keep a hiker's first-aid kit in my pocket, and make other preparations for events that happen rarely. How stupid do I have to be not to put at least that much effort into making my everyday life easier?"

Does anyone have any experience in such self-motivation? Does this set of mental tricks seem like a sufficiently viable approach? Are there any other approaches that seem worth a shot?

Pride: "If I'm so smart, then I should be able to do /better/ than those other people who don't even know about Bayesian updates, let alone the existence of akrasia..."

Sloth: "If I stop now, it's going to be /so much/ harder and more painful to start up again, instead of just keeping on keeping on..."

Desire: "I already like hiking and camping - if I keep this up, I'll be able to carry enough weight to finally take that long trip I've occasionally considered..."

Curiosity: "I'm as geeky a nerd as you can find. I wonder how far I can hack my own body?"

Does anyone have any experience in such self-motivation? Does this set of mental tricks seem like a sufficiently viable approach? Are there any other approaches that seem worth a shot?

I don't think that you get a lot of motivation from surface thoughts like the one you listed.

What motivates you at the moment to do the thing you are doing? What are your greatest fears? Explore those questions and see how the answers relate to your agenda.

I don't think that you get a lot of motivation from surface thoughts like the one you listed.

Yeah, really.

Besides, exercise is fun. You get a nice high off exercising. I start feeling awful whenever I skip it, these days. The improved health and the nice thought that I'm officially Fixing My Life are just bonuses.

To fix your life, fix your emotions, at a deep level. You need to train your lizard brain to prefer what your ape brain prefers, and train your ape brain to prefer what your conscious human brain prefers.

4DataPacRat12y

Some motivations: I'm negotiating to order a custom hiking stick, and I want to be able to actually use the thing properly without ending up dragging it behind me after so many kilometers because it's too heavy. I want to be the sort of person who could be described as a PC instead of a mere NPC; someone who is at least vaguely capable in a wide variety of situations. (Eg, I'm trying to figure out if it's worth the effort to try to swing the tuition costs for St. John's Ambulance first-aid training.) I want to be able to pull my own weight - literally - if I have to. Some fears: I don't trust my understanding of quantum theory and the MWI to rely on Everett Immortality keeping me alive; if I'm not ready to deal with whatever comes close to killing me next, then I could very well end up permanently dead, in all branches of the future leading from this point. There are few enough people who even think about x-risks; how can I consider myself competent to even start thinking about ways to avoid those if I'm not competent enough to do a few push-ups? If ancestor simulations turn out to be feasible, then if this is the original version of history, won't all my future copies be rather annoyed at me for leaving them as un-exercised weaklings (and won't the simulators laugh at them)?; and if this is a simulation, then if I can't do better than my original, then what's the point of me? (... Okay, so not all of those are actual /fears/ per se, but if an extremely hypothetical stick is enough of one to kick me in the rear to keep going, I'm willing to work with it.)

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How to become a PC?

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How to become a PC?

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