All of Brendan Heisler's Comments + Replies

Sometimes I have to let a to-do item sit for a while before I can be more real with myself about why it's important. FVP still seems like the best way of tackling such things because the structure lends itself to creating mental leverage in easy, but noticeable, ways.

Maybe a small change like writing a number next to each item list representing the number of days it's been on the list would help draw your focus to items that have been lingering a long time. Just start by writing 0 next to a new list item, and adding 1 to the number next to any list item th... (read more)

4__nobody
Apropos SRS and needing a second list: I'm currently experimenting with using Anki as a to-do tool. (Every task becomes a card, I "learn" the deck, and for each task get the choice of Again/Hard/Good/Easy with listed intervals, e.g. <15min, 1d, 6d, 27d. If I want to see the task again quickly (Again/Hard), I have to spend at least 5 minutes on it before clicking the button. Otherwise, it's ok to bury it by clicking 'Easy' on it.) This deals nicely with "nice-to-haves" that I don't want to kill yet. Whenever they come up, I just send them away to next month/quarter/year/... - that way, I don't ever have to make the hard decision to kill the idea, I could always change my mind about this later, because I know that I will be reminded eventually. These "non-tasks" are also eating a fraction of the mental capacity that they'd otherwise require, because (a) I don't get a growing list of "things that would be nice to do eventually" that I'd have to manually comb through (instead every couple of days there will be 1 or 2 of them mixed in with the review), and (b) I know that they'll pop back up eventually, so I don't have to worry about keeping track of them or finding them again if I ever change my mind. (To a lesser degree, it also forces me to start early on tasks due in several months, to keep the interval growth in check.) The only problem I had so far was tasks that are inactionable right now (e.g. taking out the trash at 5am, because noisy) needed to be 'skipped' and reviewed later, leading to "ugh not in the mood right now" skips of actually actionable tasks, leading to less stuff getting done. FVP looks like it might fix this. So for the month of December I'll be running the following modified algorithm: 1. Go through the list of tasks in Anki, for each either do it right away or put it on the (paper) list, or delegate it to future-me (i.e. pick the long interval Good/Easy option). 2. Do FVP on the paper list. 3. 3-strikes rule for "list leftovers": If I say
2willbradshaw
This sounds like it could work. I might well try this. Thanks!

Starting assumptions: impact is measured on a per-belief basis, depends on scale, and is a relative measurement to prior expectation. (This is how I am interpreting the three reminders at the end of the post.)

To me, this sounds like a percent difference. The change between the new value observed and the old value expected (whether based in actual experience or imagined, i.e. accounting for some personal bias) is measured, then divided by the original quantity as a comparison to determine the magnitude of the difference relative to the original expectation.

My sentence: You can tell that something is a big deal to you by how surprising it feels.

3Tom Lieberum

Speaking as someone who hit "Edit" on his post over 10 times before checking the FAQ: if you haven't messed with your profile settings about handling comments/posts yet, save yourself some time and just check the FAQ before trying to add spoiler text. The right formatting wasn't as obvious as I expected, although it was simple.