This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for April 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.
Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.
Immediate past diary: March 16-31
Next diary: April 16-30
I'm starting 30 days of rejection therapy. Right off the bat, I notice I have low inhibitions against asking for ridiculous things that are sure to be rejected. I cultivated an identity of being an oddball who makes bizarre and safely ignorable interjections back in high school, so such things are right inside my comfort zone. What I am not comfortable with is the making suggestions reasonable enough that there is uncertainty about whether or not someone will accept them, or such that asking might be interpreted to suggest specific negative traits (e.g. greedy or dangerous) instead of a general peculiarity.
I decided to make a move West with my friend. It's sudden and it's a change, so my brain keeps hitting the panic button every time I think about it. When I reframe it as happening a year or two from now, I know it's somewhere that I'll want to be close to eventually, that having in-state tuition right now doesn't make it much more likely that I'll get somewhere in college, and loss aversion (plus persistent alief in own unworthiness) is making me cling a lot harder to my local safety nets than I actually believe they're worth. Now I just need to pull my head out of the ground long enough to set specific subgoals and murphy-proof my landing plan..
edit: After murphy-proofing, it's apparent the cost of hitting undo on the sudden move is higher than I realized. It would be highly preferable to negotiate spending a couple of weeks with said friend to get more information, and I can probably optimize a short visit to claim a good portion of the social and motivational benefits I was looking for anyways.
Now started intentionally immersing myself in Spanish. I've always had a lackadaisical approach to language learning--I like to dabble, but I don't actually know anything. Spanish is the language I am most familiar (besides English) with--I was partially raised by my El Salvadorian grandmother, took 3 years of Spanish in middle/high school--and I STILL fail to feel comfortable speaking it. I looked into Cognito Mentoring's wiki and realized that I ought to either get serious about fluency or stop wasting my time maintaining a meager half-comprehension.
I've... (read more)