Adventures In HamLand:

• If you remember when I said I'd start using Google Now for all my reminders.... Well, I tired of its passiveness and resistance to rescheduling, so I resorted to GTasks. I still use Google now for the location-based reminders. The nice thing about GTasks is it doesn't generate any upcoming repeats of a task until I've clicked the last one off. Too many task managers made me choose between accumulating a slew of undone tasks or losing track of whether a task is completed at all.

• I've been skipping days in the control end of my melatonin self-trial. That slants my results. Recording is easier to forget when I eliminate the 'take melatonin' alarm.

• I tried to turbo-charge the skill of goal factoring. This went on for a few episodes, until I realized I instead practiced the habit of 'Set a timer, write down a few vague ideas, get swept down a minor train of thought, remember timer and panic, blank out, panic some more...' So I broke it down into steps to practice individually, and then I'll practice transitioning smoothly between steps. Summarized steps: Notice a need to goal-factor, Assign exercise to the proper (timeless) self, prepare mentally and do a first pass of sub-goals, revise list, brainstorm other ways to fill those sub-goals & revise ad infinitum. The eventual goal is to confidently and consistently generate a strong list of purposes and alternatives in the first two minutes of sitting down and thinking about a problem for 5 minutes.