I've recently come to acknowledge the value of conscientiousness. So in an attempt to become more conscientious, I've started making my bed every day (something that I otherwise find to have a neutral cost-benefit ratio).
I've started setting two alarms to help me go to bed earlier. One to brush teeth, put on pajamas, turn off screens, and read for 10 minutes, and one to actually go to sleep. This works surprisingly well, and I've been sleeping enough that I don't need an alarm clock to wake up, which feels great.
I started learning about evolution and natural selection, and found out that altruism was partly genetic, which helped me come to classify "goodness" under the same category as "personal happiness" and eliminate the cognitive dissonance I had felt about donating to EA charities.
I noticed I'm often wary of medicines or GMO food simply for seeming "unnatural", but recognized this as stemming from my previous Christian worldview. Now if I catch myself disliking something, I ask myself why, and if I trace the dislike back to my upbringing alone, I'll usually change my attitude toward it.
Cool. You may also want to set two alarms to wake up in the morning. I have slept through one before and it was unfortunate.
This is the public group rationality diary for May 5 - 23, 2015. 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.
Archive of previous rationality diaries
Note to future posters: no one is in charge of posting these threads. If it's time for a new thread, and you want a new thread, just create it. It should run for about two weeks, finish on a saturday, and have the 'group_rationality_diary' tag.