This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for March 16-31.
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: March 1-15
Next diary: April 1-15
Realized that if akrasia doesn't respond to "try harder", maybe I should try "quit not-doing the thing you're procrastinating on and do something else."
But "try harder" is extremely seductive. "Surely I can get tons of stuff done if I just try a little harder" might be more problematic than "no way I will be able to do this", because the former feels a lot nicer and therefore I'm less inclined to fight it.
I've heard this called "constructive procrastination".