I'm active on Coursera - currently taking Game Theory II. Other courses that just started but look interesting include Cryptography, Computational Molecular Evolution, and Information Theory. I'm up to try one of those or any other quantitative course that looks interesting with a study partner.

Also, I have a decent background in data science/machine learning through Coursera courses but not much practical experience. If anyone wants to partner for either a competition (something like Kaggle) or to analyze a real data set, I'd be happy to work on that.

I've been using a similar tactic lately. When an ugh field is blocking some important task, I'll explicitly ask myself "if I actually wanted to solve this problem, what would I do?" That seems to immediately generate enough emotional distance that I can come up with a more granular plan like the one you described.

I'm heavily interested in instrumental rationality -- that is, optimizing my life by 1) increasing my enjoyment per moment, 2) increasing the quantity of moments, and 3) decreasing the cost per moment.

I've taught myself a decent amount and improved my life with: personal finance, nutrition, exercise, interpersonal communication, basic item maintenance, music recording and production, sexuality and relationships, and cooking.

If you're interested in possible ways of improving your life, I might have direct experience to help, and I can probably point you in the right direction if not. Feel free to ask me anything!

I'm a PhD student in artificial intelligence, and co-creator of the SPARC summer program. AMA.