Disclaimer: Nate gave me some life advice at EA Global; I thought it was pretty good, but it may or may not be useful for other people. If you think any of this would be actively harmful for you to apply, you probably shouldn't. Notice subtle things in yourself This includes noticing things like confusion, frustration, dissatisfaction, enjoyment, etc. For instance, if you're having a conversation with somebody and they're annoying you, it's useful to notice that you're getting a little frustrated before the situation gets worse. A few weeks ago my colleagues and I wanted to do something fun, and decided to play laser tag at our workplace. However, we couldn't find the laser tag guns. As I began to comb the grounds for the guns for the second time I noticed that I felt like I was just going through the motions, and didn't really expect my search to be fruitful. At this point I stopped and thought about the problem, and realized that I had artificially constrained the solution space to things that would result in us playing laser tag at the office, rather than things that would result in us having fun. So I stopped looking for the guns and we did an escape room instead, which made for a vastly more enjoyable evening. If you're not yet at the point where you can notice unsubtle things in yourself, you can start by working on that and move up from there. Keep doing the best thing, even if you don't have a legible story for why it's good Certainly the actions you're taking should make sense to you, but your reasoning doesn't have to be 100% articulable, and you don't need to justify yourself in an airtight way. Some things are easier to argue than other things, but this is not equivalent to being more correct. For instance, I'm doing AI alignment stuff, and I have the option of reading either a textbook on linear algebra or E.T. Jaynes' probability theory textbook. Reading about linear algebra is very easy to justify in a way that can't really be disputed; it's