I'm taking an engineering course this semester in which the only task is to create a robot to compete in a "hockey" competition. I have a great team with competent, talented, and hard-working guys and I've been thoroughly enjoying it.

I mistakenly assumed that since we knew what we were doing and were working hard (I have never been on such a team before), that we'd have no problems. Turns out that even a good team needs project management, hard deadlines and all that other fun stuff.

Come the night before the preliminary competition, we were about two weeks away from ready. About 3am we finally had seemingly working hardware. I was the code guy, and at long last it was my turn to start testing the fancy code and algorithms I'd been churning out for months. I had way too much to do with five hours to go and no sleep, but I started incrementally testing the pieces regardless.

It is this point that I am proud of myself.

• I noticed that one of my team-mates was unhappy, as though he'd already given up. Younger me would not have done this.

• I realised that this mattered. Slightly less younger me might have noticed, but would have ignored it since he was already in a position to have his way without regard for what others wanted. After all, he'd waited so long for his turn to call the shots.

• I asked my team-mate how he felt about our current position. I intended to convince him not to give up and aid me unreservedly.

• After several minutes, I let him convince me that there wasn't time to test complicated code, we just needed something quick and simple which would work with little tweaking.

I had spent dozens of hours writing sophisticated code, stretched myself, mulled over algorithms and strategies morning and night - and now I was supposed to abandon all that because the rest of the project was behind schedule?

Well, I was supposed to. That was rational decision which might give us a chance at 9am and I made it with almost no internal fuss. Past me never could have made that decision, too stubborn even if it cost him, and here it wasn't even hard.

That I can point to and declare is progress. Well done me.

There's relatively little discussion of emotions on Less Wrong, but they occupy a central place in CFAR's curriculum and organizational culture.

[...]

"If you had any idea how much time we spend at CFAR talking about our feelings…"

This greatly raises my opinion of CFAR.

So did this ever get off the ground? Seems like a fantastic project, and if not, I'd like to push to make it happen.

Because the 4th of January is a time when many people might be away on holiday or otherwise unavailable, it would probably be worth getting a sense for numbers beforehand to avoid . If you expect to attend, please let us know (no commitment!) either in a comment here (and get a free upvote for your trouble), or on the mailing list group, or via some other suitable channel.

I'll start off by saying I expect to attend (~75% probability)

I'm a relatively new LWer, so still working on the basics. Mostly, I keep catching myself rationalising impulsive decisions. It's startling just how frequently I do this.

This morning I decided to go buy new hiking boots, changing my mind from doing it in the afternoon after I'd worked on an overdue essay. Having made my decision, I justified it saying that it was an important purchase to get right and I should do it while I'm freshest - this thought occurring after the decision was made. I hardly need spell out what the true motivation was.

Well, it's one thing to catch myself rationalising and acknowledge a problem, but it's a harder step to honestly reevaluate the options and choose rationally. That's what I need to work on now. Tsuyoku Naritai.

Done and done. And this makes for my very first comment. The first of many.