Bought new headphones
A friend of mine noticed that I'm often frustrated at work, and she asked if that's normal. I thought about it for a while, and found one low-hanging fruit to optimise: open-space office noise. Bought a new pair of headphones that offer decent noise isolation. My distractability dropped perceptibly. I'm satisfied with that change.
Contacted Rudi Hoffman.
I don't know what to label this under because a.) it's mostly just the beginning of a still undecided sequences of choices and b.) this is mostly just mental overflow. An "I have no one to tell about it but need to tell someone" sort of thing.
Three months ago, I accepted that cryonics was a worthwhile endeavor. Now that I have a job to match my needs, I can pursue setting up a policy and enrolling (once I save up the initial fees of course). I put in the call to Mr. Hoffman Thursday for a quote on an insurance policy for covering my preservation.
I'll admit to nervousness. I have Crohn's Disease. It is a chronic annoyance mostly. For those who aren't familiar with the condition, imagine feeling a set of car keys pass through your body every once in a while. Briefly annoying, but not debilitating or life altering at the moment. It requires little more of me than a handful of immune-suppressants daily, a good diet, and exercise, the latter two of which I'm perfectly content to provide.
Despite my young age, stable position, and otherwise good health, I'm afraid this pre-existing condition will bar my way right here at the start. I know I shouldn't let this bother me, since I have only loose estimates of the price of policies anyway. I don't have enough reason, yet, to worry. But I do because this is something important to me. I want to live, and, no, I don't feel I need to explain that.
Followup:
Rudi got back in touch with me and discussed pricing and options.
As expected, my illness made prices higher than normal. Which is fine because it did not raise them too high for my goal. I had already accepted the fact that, given my current position, it would be unlikely I could start immediately to apply for cryonics. I plan to be in much better financial straits in a few years, which time will allow me to save up for initial fees and costs as well as continue researching the topic and my options.
Given the figures Rudi quoted me, and assuming my beliefs do not change in the next few years, I hope to be signed up when I start my next job. It'll be a nice way to ring in the new life.
For anyone considering cryonics: if you are healthy, start now, not later. I'm lucky. My health scare was not debilitating, physically or financially (so far). You may not be so lucky when life tells you "so what."
I've been using something very similar to this "autofocus" system as a to-do list / productivity tool for 6 months now - probably the longest I've ever managed to stick with a specific system and really feel like it's working. For the last month or so, one of the main motivating factors was that I was well on my way to completing a full notebook of list pages! I have now done so and started a new notebook on 30th June. Hopefully this one continues to work well too!
I would definitely recommend the system. One thing that I've always found I really need from a to-do list system is for it to give that feeling of every nagging thing-to-do being recorded somewhere outside my brain, so that my brain can chill out and get on with doing the things that are priorities. With this system, I have a reasonable level of confidence that nothing is slipping through the net and that, at any given moment, I'm probably working on something that is reasonably high on the priority list.
My main tweak to the described system is that I have two lists running simultaneously, one from the front of the notebook and one from the back. The front is for "work stuff" (fairly loosely defined; it can include things like topping up the snacks in my desk drawer, for instance) and the back for other stuff like personal finance things, housework chores, correspondence with friends, etc. I'm strict about working the front list according to the system when I'm in a work context, but way more relaxed about working the back list - I'll pick off random things from any current page that are appropriate to do right now, and don't mind going past a page without doing anything or rejecting all of the items. I think this works well because keeping the two lists separate enables me to have this sharp differentiation as to whether I have to be strict about the system or not.
Started learning programming. I set myself the goal of studying two hours per day and so far I have adhered to this plan. I follow The Odin Project, with Peter Hurford's suggested modifications.
Came up with a productivity system that has worked wonderfully since I adopted it three weeks ago.
Started tracking my time (using Toggl), which further boosted my productivity, by making me more mindful about how I spend my time and by providing me with information that I can analyze to draw useful lessons.
Together with a few other friends, experimented with a scheme involving reciprocal anonymous feedback. In light of the positive results, I plan to repeat the exercise and eventually write a comment or post about it.
Bought noise-cancelling headphones. I can now listen to audiobooks on airplanes, subways, and other noisy environments.
Continuing with the Art of Problem Solving: Introduction to Algebra book that I'm studying with the help of zedzed (see here for an explanation; last update was in the June 16-30 Rationality Diary):
Grades for chapters 12-15:
Also, finally(!) found an exercise routine that I think works for me. I've had multiple issues with other routines - I'm often very tired during the times I have available for exercise; my knees / ankles / back / neck hurt sometimes when exercising; I have frequent stomach problems and vigorous exercise often makes me very nauseous; and I'm not so great at self-discipline. The program I've been using is The Complete Book of Pilates for Men, which my wife discovered. It starts out very low-level and builds up from there, so at least for now it's not so active that I can't do it when tired or when my stomach hurts; it has modifications for hurt knees / back / neck; it's very low time commitment (at least for starters); and I reward myself with a small cookie or piece of cake when I'm done (+ it makes my wife happy).
Some recent drama has emphasized a couple obvious weaknesses of mine:
Funnily enough, it was only a couple days ago that I was thinking of how harder it is to internalize meaningful rationality skills in the abstract rather than when confronted with them in real life. Though, in all actuality, "What would Harry James Potter Evans Verres do?" is probably a better huristic in most situations that don't involve civilized human interaction. I say this in full knowledge of HJPEV's flaws. After all, it's not like I'm going to eryrnfr n qnatrebhf pevzvany, trg zl orfg sevraq zheqrerq, naq cbffvoyl qrfgebl gur havirefr, right?
In ham-land:
This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for July 16-31.
Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.
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