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Gunnar_Zarncke comments on Group Rationality Diary, Dec. 1-13, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: polymathwannabe 01 December 2015 10:39PM

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Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 03 December 2015 11:07:15PM *  2 points [-]

Established a useful new habit Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Lots of routine and habits related to social interaction mostly in job context:

  • Asking questions to get people to understand something instead of stating facts.
  • Convincing three intermediaries to convince a third more powerful person.
  • Apply the STAR method in dialogs to get the most out of it (in job contexts).

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

I was pointed to The Thing All Women Do That You Don't Know About by a friend and she made clear that it is real for her. I listened, considered it, talked to a few friends about it and changed my mind. I also changed my behavior a bit in response to it.

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Accepted that I will never get acknowledgement for my support from one person and thereby handled my continued frustration from trying.

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Still accumulating advice in my Anki deck. The most recent:

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Most people are not happy if they get information-dense diagrams I'm quite sure provide the information they need and what but apparently in a too dense form to deal with; even people I'd really have expected to appreciate the information. I need to simplify summarize and in many cases probably also reduce inferential distance.

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Still failing to really reliably getting enough sleep.

Comment author: Elo 04 December 2015 06:43:43AM 4 points [-]

A suggestion:

One of our lesswrongers has a 9pm alarm. The 9pm alarm is a trigger for him to decide what time he is going to bed. It is not "go to bed" but "work out when I am going to bed tonight".

Seems like a solution not commonly mentioned. Otherwise - if you expand the problem more I can try to offer suggestions...

Comment author: Bryan-san 04 December 2015 08:34:14PM *  3 points [-]

I do this, though I hadn't heard of other people doing it before and use it slightly differently. Mine is set to 9:30pm and it is a marker point for me to use when keeping track of time late at night.

If you have the kind of schedule where you get home at 6pm and use a computer until late, then it's easy to lose track of time until it's suddenly 2am. Having a marker point closer to your sleep time (say 9:30pm for a 11pm bedtime) helps in keeping up your internal clock and signals when you need to make schedule modifications in order to finish things up before you need to sleep. I think this is also a good idea to create the form of alarm that will get you to go to sleep but also avoid Hyperbolic Discounting at the last minute.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 04 December 2015 07:21:27AM 0 points [-]

You underestimate the number of things I have tried :-) But thanks for the suggestion nonetheless. The problem isn't as bad as it used to be. I have some grip on it. Part of the problem is being father of four sons...

Comment author: Elo 05 December 2015 01:49:35PM 1 point [-]

certainly I do, The interesting thing about this idea is that it's not about sleep so much as planning. I only know about it because I heard the alarm and asked what it was. If you do try it; do update LW about it.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 05 December 2015 10:42:23PM 0 points [-]

I do something like that. I have to. I know from long experience that I need 6 solid hours of sleep. Add padding at the beginning for actually falling asleep of 30 minutes (I have worked hard on getting that down but 30min about is it). I know when my children will wake me up the next morning and/or when I will have to get up the latest to get them to school/kindergarten (and there is no-one I can fall back to to do it). So on most days I know when I will have to go to bed the latest. At best I can squeeze out an extra 10mins in the morning. And the latest is usually is. I'd like to get to bed earlier as 6 hours doesn't allow for catching up on lost sleep days before - what sometimes happens. My sons actually know about this and my oldest asks me: When will you go to bed in the evening. And most times I plan midnight (the convenient schelling fence). But seldom make it. Reflecting on the fact that I might be more productive if I didn't build up sleep deficit doesn't seem to help. Probably I'm shifting unproductivity around. The evenings are my most valuable time...