This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for September 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.
Next diary: September 16-30
Previous diary: August 16-31
A mental habit I've been cultivating for several months with considerable success: "cardinality reduction".
I often find myself in a state where I'm keen to get things done, but there's no obvious next task to work on, and I don't have any specific desire to direct my attention. Bad things can happen in this state. I can start projects (initiate a git repo, open a book, start writing something, etc.), only to discover that I'm not in the mood for that particular type of task, before casting it aside, (perhaps developing an aversion to it in the process), and looking for another potentially abortive task. I can waste a lot of time casting around for the "right" thing to do, after which I feel like I've expended a lot of energy but have nothing to show for it.
Anyway, I've learned to recognise this state, and when it happens I tell myself "just reduce the cardinality of the total set of things that need to be done at some point", (i.e. "find something that needs doing, and do it"). This usually starts out as shallow maintenance tasks, chores, housework, etc., but with some frequency will turn into some complex dependent task lurking at the back of my to-do list. Something gets done, even if it's not what I might have imagined I'd end up doing, and I get my productivity afterglow rather than being frustrated at having wasted an evening not doing very much at all.
"Cardinality reduction" has become such a crystallised concept that I will sometimes schedule an hour of it, safe in the knowledge that afterwards, some progress will have been made on my assorted stuff.
This is precisely what the GTD system focuses on.