Not measuring twice before I cut (machining), directly after my adviser told me this.

Before that happened:

I'm not sure if I can count it as a mistake, since it's mostly his fault, but a month or so after I started my adviser came up to me and asked why I had been drawing all these plans, and not using the specs. No one told me that someone else had already designed the laser I supposed to be building.

For me, it seemed like it was the natural result of wanting to know 'why'.

I started college thinking I wanted to do biochemical engineering and study molecular biology without knowing much about it other than I liked the sound of it. For most of my life I had been interested in nature/biology. However, I decided that biology classes seemed like just reading books and repeating the information, and I was interested in learning how the chemicals worked, so I continued to take more chemistry, and changed my major to chemistry. In organic chemistry I was upset that the rules I learned seemed vague and handwavy, and when I asked more about them, the professor said to take physical chemistry and learn quantum mechanics. So I took physical chemistry, and changed my major to physics. Now in physics, I find myself drawn to particle physics and phenomenology. I don't have any direct memories of asking or wanting to know why as with my other switches, but I do have a distinct feeling of discomfort knowing that there is an underlying lower level reason for why something works, and ignoring it.

I've found that my tendency to go to the bottom occurs pretty much whenever I try to learn something new---when I learned programming, I ended up wanting to learn about computer architecture, and when I let myself past that, I still often ended up learning about little bits and pieces in far more detail then was necessary.

It seems to me that this pattern is what happens when I want to learn how things work and reduce uncertainty in a reductionist fashion, and don't have outside goals I am applying my learning to. If I am trying to solve an engineering or research problem, create something, or get a certain grade I can (depending) skip over things that I don't need to know or worry about. If I don't set a goal like that, and just decide to "learn stuff" then the easiest question is to ask why, which gives me a goal.

I'm re-visiting linear algebra - I took a course in college, but that was more of a instruction manual on linear algebra problem solving techniques and vocabulary than a look at the overall theory. I'm reading Linear Algebra Done Right, and was wondering if anyone else is interested.

This book starts from the beginning of the subject, assuming no knowledge of linear algebra. The key points is that you are about to immerse yourself in serious mathematics, with an emphasis on your attaining a deep understanding of the definitions, theorems, and proofs.

How do you not get fatigued with recording things?

What are your recommendations for amount of structure before you incorporate pomodoros? Is there any structural/organizational stuff you should have set up before you do them?

If possible, I'm interested in how unique the passwords were.

It usually annoys me. It steals attention, like a beggar demanding money.

Beeminder: +3. Defining goals in a way that works well is difficult.

GTD + 0 It doesn't seem to be very useful when you don't have any appointments and things you want to do are more along the lines of "do all the problems in this textbook"

Getting on a somewhat decent sleep schedule + 2. Making my computer automatically turn off at 11 pm combined with putting shades made out of pillow cases on my bedroom lights has helped me go to sleep between 12 and 2 usually, which is much better. This gives me about 4 hours of extra time that otherwise would have been spent on the internet in a wasteful way. Flux (a program that dims/reddens the screen at night) is nowhere near powerful enough.

Journaling about what my goals are +8. It's difficult to be motivated when I don't know why I'm doing anything.

Changing how I visualize something so that I'm not thinking about an outcome that produces anxiety +5. I have found thinking about procrastination as anxiety to be much more helpful than thinking about the Equation. While it could be though of anxiety resulting from expectations, I usually frame it in the sense of "what am I afraid of?" Then I can imagine something bad happening. Addressing the actual likelihood of a Bad Scary Thing doesn't appear to work. Instead what helps is if I change the framework and purposefully just start thinking about some other aspect that is more desirable.

An example is that I don't want to "call some people" and tell them they need to redo a repair job because it sucks. Once I thought about "I want X fixed!" then calling them and the social barrier seemed less of an issue.

pomodoros +1. I find that I often have difficulty coming back to work after a 5 minute break, and I end up doing 25-15. I had more luck with periods of 50-10. When I don't feel very excited about the idea of doing something, then they are more useful.

Social commitments -3. These make me feel yucky and I just want to avoid the activity all together.

I feel that there are lots of synergies between these things. A few years ago, I had well defined goals, but no organizational skills and poor habits. I became very unhappy with my inability to accomplish my goals. Once I started getting practice with beeminder, and a number of other things (one being Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but I'm not sure how to fit that into akrasia tactics) then I was able to examine my goals again and things fit together much nicer.

Next time, please include a short introduction of what THINK is so I don't have to look it up.

(It is an effective altruism group)

I would write down your beliefs about working, and then analyze them. The goal should be to identify false and unhelpful beliefs and then find things that you can replace them with. Your basic beliefs about how the working world works will be a much better psychology base for other skills like beating procrastination or improving willpower. Read books or listen to things that will replace your old beliefs.

One thing that is an important part of procrastination is anxiety that is often related to feeling like your work is part of your self-worth, and so by not working you feel bad.

If you aren't getting anywhere, then you may want to allow yourself to read some procrastination/self help books. For me back when I was depressed at one point I thought "hey, if I'm not going to do anything but sit in my room and watch videos, I guess I'll watch these positive psychology videos". That was a pretty awesome choice. Summaries that other's have posted are good for references, but I get much more out of reading books, where I have more time to make connections and figure out how something would fit into my life.

Also, pay a visit to a counselor, or get a free consultation (E.Y's partner Erin does productivity related counseling). Since you are in school this is probably cheap, and a good counselor is worth quite a bit.

Chloe's theory: she thinks the ritual that sacrificed Yog Sothoth summoned a different Harry than the Harry they had known previously? She thinks some Eldritch Abomination piggy-backed on the summoning of Harry to sneak in to this world? Is there a Cthulhu Mythos story somewhere where even the trees shake like they're afraid?