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hamnox comments on Group Rationality Diary, October 16-31 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: therufs 17 October 2014 03:56PM

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Comment author: hamnox 26 October 2014 05:51:05PM *  2 points [-]

I finished Alex Vermeer's 8760 Guide, which I've been trudging on-and-off through for months. I now have a plan of sorts for the next half-year; this is quite a novelty for me. The plan is programming projects, job applications, emotional monitoring, and getting rid of unnecessary stuff.

I am implementing a motivation hack (thank you Nick Winter!) of deliberately telling people what I'm up to, even if it feels like motivation overkill, because I need some overkill. That is what I originally started doing posting to the group diaries for, but I got sidetracked.

  • job applications: I'm compiling a list of local startups and walking up and asking them what they need help with, and if it's nothing I can currently help with then what skills I can install to make myself useful. I'm doing the "build up a portfolio, then apply" approach also, but that's slow-going. More importantly: the fact that thinking about talking to the kind of people I want to work with sends me into a terror-and-shame spiral is a reason to start trying to do it now instead of later. This is something that will happen every other day when I move down into Salt Lake, more weekly for now.
  • Programming projects include: a text-adventure game, a personal ramblings website with JS/JQuery navigation, and aforementioned emotional monitoring. I'll be poking people for feedback about them. I got my dad to burn an Ubuntu disk, because Windows won't let me program anything interesting.
  • Getting rid of unnecessary stuff mostly got done while I was writing my plan. I did a couple of yard sales and swap meets, next up is secondhand stores.
  • Networking is also happening. Weekly lunch dates with co-workers, short after-shift reviews, and weekly goal setting. My temp job is not terribly important, but the habits are; I want to seek out people instead of avoiding them.