LESSWRONG
LW

All of arbo's Comments + Replies

Habitual Productivity
arbo00

Fantastic write-up. I am very impressed by your recent productivity, and I'd like to replicate it for myself.

I strongly recommend finding a different and preferably healthier route to habitual productivity.

I don't share your distaste for unproductive activities, so I'm going to pursue two alternative routes to habitual productivity. Both entail adding incentives for productive work rather than mindhacking a distaste for "traditional" fun:

  1. Gamification: Closely related to mindhacking. This strategy could range from something as simple as a da

... (read more)
Reply
Welcome to Less Wrong! (7th thread, December 2014)
arbo130

Hello. I’m Mark. I’m a 24-year-old software engineer in Michigan.

I found LessWrong a little over a year ago via HPMOR. I’m working through the books listed on MIRI’s Research Guide. I finished Bostrom’s Superintelligence earlier this week, and I’m currently working through the Sequences and Naive Set Theory. I’m not quite sure what I want to do after I complete the Research Guide; but AI is challenging and interesting, so I’m excited to learn more.

P.S. I’m a SuperLurker™. I find it very difficult to post in public forums. I only visualize the futures where... (read more)

Reply
1Friendly-HI
Be honest, do you really actually fear cringing when you re-read your stuff months or years from now? Sounds to me like an invented reason to mask a much more plausible fear: Looking foolish in front of others by saying foolish things. Well in case you do make a fool of yourself you always have the option of admitting "back then I was foolish in saying that and I have changed my mind because of X". In this communuty being able to do that is usually accompanied with a slight status gain rather than severe status punishment and ridicule, so no need to worry about that.
1John_Maxwell
You say you anticipate cringing... is that a correct anticipation? Do you currently find yourself frequently beating yourself up for things you've said or written? If so, maybe that's the bug you want to fix first. Reinterpretation can be a good strategy; maybe try to frame your past post differently. For example, despite whatever factors you might find make a post of yours cringeworthy, it seems likely that at least one person found it valuable, interesting, or at least amusing. Anyway, welcome!
Neo100

Instead of cringing you can think "wow, I made a lot of progress since". It did the trick for me, but well, YMMV.

Reply