Running the names through native speakers definitely was a good idea :D
Thomas, thank you for setting up the poll! Somehow this didn't occur to me.
There's no chance that I will be able to secure xlist.com or anything similar for a reasonable sum of money (i.e. under $3000 or so).
Edit: oh, sorry, I completely misread you (was in a hurry). I did a search on http://www.naminum.com/prepend?q=list, and there were one-syllable words among the results, but none of them jumped at me as a good name (in addition to the vast majority of them being already taken).
I’d like to ask LW for feedback on names for my upcoming todo list app.
In summary, I spent the last 2 years developing a todo app to replace Wunderlist because I’ve always been unsatisfied with it. I mentioned the app on LW earlier. Microsoft recently announced that they plan to shut down Wunderlist, which is a one-in-a-lifetime marketing opportunity, so I’m currently in scramble mode preparing everything (site, app, company) for the closure event.
The central idea of the app is that it helps you keep your todo list focused on what you can do right now, at ...
Yes, I meant a low-functioning state. My current todo app lacks tools for assigning contexts to tasks. When I switch to my own app (currently in development), I'll make a dedicated context for this type of tasks, e.g. @zombie - and will try to adopt the following TAP:
I do have this one, but the trigger doesn't fire reliably. Sometimes I go to bed, sometimes I don't.
Just tried to list my fully-adopted TAPs and found that they are all linked to my use of a smartphone todo app:
There's a TAP I'd like to adopt, but ...
For me, the best way to replenish willpower is a long solitary walk. 2 hours, 5 kilometers or longer, preferably in nature or a non-crowded park, with minimized exposure to cars, dogs, people, speech, loud sounds, and any other attention-taxing things. I've been going on these walks for over 20 years, so the technique is time-tested.
Also: mini-vacations. Basically the same as above, but they should provide at least a week-long period of uninterruptible time ahead. This works wonders for me.
...I've read (I can't remember where) that completing difficult task
Procrastination is a more general concept. Idea Debt, as described in the article, is a particular cause / 'method' of procrastination.
Went to the gym for the first time in my life.
It has been two months since I started (sorry, I missed the previous month's bragging thread, so I'm posting in this one), and I'm already seeing results.
Just a quick dump of what I've been thinking recently:
A train of thought is a sequence of thoughts about a particular topic that lasts for some time, which may produce results in the form of decisions and updated beliefs.
My work, as a technical co-founder of a software company, essentially consists of riding the right trains of thought and documenting decisions that arise during the ride.
Akrasia, in my case, means that I'm riding the wrong train of thougt.
Distraction means some outside stimulus that compels my mind to hop to a different train of th
Here's an article on Engadget about the AMA: http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/09/stephen-hawking-ai-reddit-ama/
A 5K+ karma AMA on Reddit, and an article on a mainstream gadget website, discussing AI safety and even citing Steve Omohundro, right in the article. This is a huge success. Properly discussed AI risk is now officially mainstream. It makes me proud that I was a part of this success as a SIAI donor.
I do about 3 hours of legit work when I'm in my usual situation (family, work), but I do way more when I'm alone, both on- and off-the-grid: 12 hours or even more (of course assuming that the problem I'm working on is workable and I don't hit any serious brick walls). My last superfocus period lasted for about two weeks, it happened when my family went on vacation, and I took a mini-vacation from work myself (though the task I was working on was pretty trivial). My longest superfocus period was about 45 days, it happened on a long off-the-grid vacation.
I stopped reading political news 2.5 years ago, and haven't looked back since. I now view news as an addiction, similar to fast food, alcohol or gambling. I occasionally consume a bit of political news here and there, and it always leaves a bad taste in my "mental mouth", almost physically, as if I've eaten something too big and sugary to be healthy.
(This is despite the fact that I live in Russia, a country in which news seemingly have higher survival value than in developed countries. Plus, I live in a region bordering eastern Ukraine, which now...
Buy and read this book right now: "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Robert Glover
(I can't tell from your post whether you are male or female, but it doesn't matter. The book is equally good for either.)
In essence, this book may help you learn how to stop being a victim, how to set your own limits, and how to get your own needs met. It also may inoculate you against getting into future relationships like this.
I don't have a blog or even Twitter for it yet, and I guess I need to set these up, but I still haven't came up with the final product name. (Am I yak-shaving? Maybe it would be better to just start blogging and worry about the name later?)
Just checked out Google Calendar and indeed, it handles recurring tasks much better than most todo apps I've seen. When I enter a recurring task, it fills it into my future schedule, and lets me edit a concrete instance of that task, as opposed to editing the entire future schedule. Thanks for the tip!
As for Todoist and other features: does it allow to dismiss a dateless task temporarily without making it dateful? I have Todoist installed on my phone but haven't found how to do that.
Haha, thanks, but I already specced out and outsourced Stage 1 of the MVP :)))
Anyway, here's what I find lacking in other personal Todo apps:
1. Recurring Task Fragility
I rely on recurring / repeating tasks a lot, I use them to automate my life. The problem is, in most todo apps recurring tasks are too brittle.
For example, I have a task on 15th of each month. One month I decide to do it earlier, on 12th of the month. The natural way would be to just reassign the due date from 15th to 12th, but doing that would change the recurrence condition of the task: it...
I think Evernote should integrate with Google Now perfectly well. If Wunderlist does that, Evernote must do that as well. Here's an article that implies that this is possible: http://lifehacker.com/5992572/save-a-quick-note-to-evernote-gmail-and-other-apps-with-androids-voice-actions (and here's another one: http://www.getproductivefast.com/2013/03/google-now-voice-notes-to-evernote.html).
As for the text skills, try to use gesture typing or Fleksy. I prefer gesture typing on the stock Android keyboard on Nexus 5. If I remember correctly, Swype (the origina...
Here's the homescreen of my main Android phone (with some obvious apps omitted, e.g. Phone, Flashlight etc):
I fully agree with this. Here's a good quote I found on the web:
If you really deeply care about something, you will do it. You will do it without needing a list or a system or a reminder.
(Source)
I prefer stronger alcohol in very small doses (20-30g or so), just for the taste and for unwinding after a hard day. I don't like feeling 'buzzed', let alone drunk, so I don't usually drink more than that: a normal-sized bottle of good scotch can last for several months.
Taste-wise, I like higher-end scotch whisky (mostly various single malts, peated or otherwise, including cask strength ones) and plain simple bourbon, but I can't stomach any dose of vodka - I find its taste disgusting. I also enjoy good wine, no matter white or red. I don't drink beer, though I can definitely enjoy it.
Yes. Another example that comes to mind is conflict between rival groups of hardcore football / soccer ultras.
They are usually called "war".
Doh. Yes. How could I miss that? War is team PVP with permadeath, but I think we can call it a 'game' only when participation is voluntary, where players join as mercenaries, professional soldiers or militia, not as unwilling conscripts.
Some assorted thoughts:
Virtual PVP games with permadeath (or even progress permaloss) are relatively rare.
There's currently no virtual PVP game that allows destruction of the game world, e.g. restarting and wiping a server triggered by an in-game event.
Some real-world PVP games (e.g. racing or MMA fighting) have their risks, but injury or death are relatively rare because these games are regulated. The percentage of the population willing to compete in such games is tiny. There must be unregulated PVP games with permadeath, but I'm struggling to imag
Here's my system for that:
I always carry an LTE-connected smartphone capable of gesture typing, so I'm able to quickly write down anything whenever and wherever it occurs to me, be it in a park, in a forest, at work, on a toilet etc. (My personal preference is a high-end big-screen phone with a stock Android (currently Nexus 5), but as of September 17 2014, you can use iOS 8 with a custom keyboard).
I use several mobile apps intended for capturing different kinds of thoughts: Wunderlist, Trello, Google Docs. I prefer these apps because they all sync to the ...
A mobile-friendly version of the website.
Downvoted because I disagree: I'd prefer a dedicated section. Filtering out open threads is too much work.
Upvoted. I'd participate.
Summary: Evernote + gesture typing, unsorted and untagged.
Do you take any notes on paper? If so do you scan them or otherwise digilatize them?
No. Paper is cumbersome and unsearchable. I need my notes with me at all times, so I use Evernote.
Do you have specific strategies for deciding which information to write down?
Most often, I record details that would likely be lost after a mental context switch. Also, if I feel that I will need this piece of information in the future, I just write it down.
...How do you write notes to capture all important inform
For me, having nothing to do is a luxury. When I find myself in this mode, I take long walks, let my mind drift and think about whatever it feels like (usually it chooses to think about one of my ongoing projects, big unsolvable world-scale problems, future, lack of moral progress, or sex), read long-form stuff (mostly Kindle books on my phone) and generally relax and recharge, assuming that I can find a relatively quiet environment.
Edison, Bill Clinton, Plato, Oprah, Einstein, Caesar, Bach, Ford, Steve Jobs, Goebbels, Buddha and other humans superlative superlative in their respective skill-sets
Is "superlative superlative" intended?
Eating a handful of nuts a day.
"Scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the Harvard School of Public Health came to this conclusion after analyzing data on nearly 120,000 people collected over 30 years."
"The most obvious benefit was a reduction of 29 percent in deaths from heart disease - the major killer of people in America. But we also saw a significant reduction - 11% - in the risk of dying from cancer."
Yes, camera is mounted on a smaller robot, and you can even see it in the video. The motion feels natural because it's motion-captured.
As for the real-time rendering of scenes with motion tracking, here's an interesting Star Wars demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdsFEMDceNg
My reaction to video art is usually 'meh', but this one is absolutely fantastic. This is easily the best piece of video art I've seen in years. I re-watched it a dozen times already. Over 1,800,000 views on Youtube.
From the Youtube video description:
...Box explores the synthesis of real and digital space through projection-mapping on moving surfaces. The short film documents a live performance, captured entirely in camera.
Bot & Dolly produced this work to serve as both an artistic statement and technical demonstration. It is the culmination of multip
I was on Astrid too. I switched to Wunderlist mostly because their import from Astrid worked correctly. Wunderlist is OK, though I can't say I'm completely satisfied with it. Its UI is laggy (on a Nexus 4!) and unreliable, for example the auto-sync often destroys the last task I just typed in, or when I accidentally tap outside the task entry box the text I just typed is lost forever.
I'm looking at alternatives, and the one I like the most so far is Remember the Milk. Last time I tried it (probably a year ago) it was rubbish, but the latest version has a c...
cutting out something I often turn to to avoid actual work
Mainstream news are a dopamine loop magnified by an intermittent reinforcement schedule. You keep clicking for more and checking the sources every 10 minutes. Plus you can't break out of the loop intellectually because the news content switches you from the 'intellectual mode' into the 'tribal mode' or even the 'imminent danger' mode. In the absence of mainstream news, technical news alone were never that addictive to me.
I don't read mainstream news sources, and I don't participate in social networks, but I do read technical, professional and scientific news.
Here's how I get the news: If a mainstream story is important, I'll hear about it from co-workers or family. Also, high-magnitude stories (e.g. Snowden / NSA, or yesterday's 5 year sentence for AlexeI Navalny) usually appear on non-mainstream news sources.
The point of quitting news is not stopping being aware of what happens around you. The point is to avoid their negative effects (scrambling the mind, incorrectly perc...
In case of work-like play, I have a resolution: stop playing immediately. It doesn't mean quitting the game for good, but rather "end the session now, if a game permits that". Also, this is why I generally don't play games that punish me for leaving early (e.g. WoW raids, DOTA2).
Things that worked for me for at least two years:
Smartphone GTD app: +10. The track record is 3 years or so. Absolutely indispensable. My primary app used to be Astrid, and when Yahoo killed it, I switched to Wunderlist (mostly because their Astrid import worked on the first try, and they imported all my recurring tasks correctly). I'm also playing with Remember the Milk, and really I like their user interface so far.
Automating life with recurring tasks in a smartphone GTD app: +9. Again, 3 years or so. I have a lot of recurring tasks in my app, with v
Hmm, this is surprising. At first I thought you're providing examples of bonding behaviors that don't raise oxytocin levels, but decided to google anyway, and voila: Oxytocin and the Biopsychology of Performance in Team Sports, Gert-Jan Pepping and Erik J. Timmermans.
The second example, killing others with allies in combat, seems to be similar to team sports. However, the third one, being held in captivity / abused, seems to be different in kind. Do you have any sources on it?
Edit: I wonder if playing a team-based competitive game like Team Fortress 2 has any effect on oxytocin levels, in addition to dopamine effects that are typical for video games?
I meant the hack I outlined in the original post: increasing oxytocin via bonding behaviors to dampen amygdala's fear response.
high-prolactin afterglow
You probably meant high-oxytocin afterglow.
If an ugh field is indeed a form of an amygdala hijack, one will have a hard time consciously making oneself comfortable with the task, because the amygdala responds faster than the rational brain. A neurochemical hack might work better.
Here's the closest one I could find: Specificity of the neuroendocrine response to orgasm during sexual arousal in men. Also, Wikipedia article on oxytocin says that "The relationship between oxytocin and human sexual response is unclear" and cites multiple studies on oxytocin and orgasm, but none of them seem to show any major effect.
So my impression is that oxytocin secretion per se is not heavily affected by orgasm (there is a short-term rise, but that's about it.) However, orgasm significantly affects two other hormones, dopamine and prolacti...
I've found a way to copy/paste from Kindle! Their software reader, at least the Windows version, allows copying:
...You may wonder how researchers did most of the oxytocin experiments related to bonding. They piped it (or drugs that neutralized it) directly into rodents’ brains— onto spots no larger than peppercorns. However, even if you could pipe it into an unloving mate’s brain, you’d have to squirt it in every time you were together. Bonds are only created when oxytocin is consistently released in response to a particular person.
Next time you read about
Alas, oxytocin supplements (there is a nasal spray, if I remember correctly) don't seem to work. When released naturally, it's released where it matters and in precise amounts, while the shotgun approach of the nasal spray makes it easy to miss the correct dosage and delivery location, which may cause various adverse effects.
Warning: my source on the above is a popular book, Cupid's Poisoned Arrow -- but, to their credit, they do cite their scientific sources. If Kindle had a way of copying / quoting text from its books, I'd look up the relevant paragraph ...
A lifehack idea: using oxytocin to counteract ugh fields:
Ugh fields might be a form of an amygdala hijack.
Oxytocin is known to dampen amygdala's 'fight, flight or freeze' responses.
Oxytocin production is increased during bonding behaviors (e.g. parent-child, pets, snuggling / Karezza).
If 1, 2 and 3 are true, we could reduce the effect of an ugh field by petting a dog, hugging a baby or snuggling (but not orgasming) with a lover -- before confronting the task that induces the ugh field.
Disclaimer: I am not a brain scientist, so the terminology, log...
The link to Budge Burgess story is broken -- please fix.