Group Rationality Diary, October 16-31

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for October 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.

Previous diary: October 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for October 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.

Previous diary: October 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

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.