Personal Notes On Productivity (A categorization of various resources)
post by CurtisSerVaas · 2015-03-25T01:35:34.912Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 14 commentsContents
14 comments
For each topic, I’ve curated a few links that I’ve found to be pretty high quality.
- Meta:(Epiphany Addiction, Reversing Advice, Excellence Porn)
- @Learning:
- Success People: (Mastery),(ChoosingTopics: Osci,PG)
- Thinking: (Ikigai, Stoicism, Rationality)
- HabitChange: (!ShootDog)
- Productivity.Principles/Energy/Relaxation:(FullEngagement, ArtOfLearning)
- Productivity.Systems/Hacks: (Autofocus, GTD/ZTD, EatFrog),(Scott Young)
- Depression/Anxiety:
- Social:
- Meditation
Full List: https://workflowy.com/s/zUTEaY0ZcJ
I'd like feedback on:
- What other categories/links would you include (I'm sure there's lots of interesting stuff I'm missing.)? What do you think of the categorization ("Thinking" is a pretty large category.)?
- Whether you think I should make cross-posts about sub-topics here. The main benefit of making more cross posts is that the discussion/comments would be more focused on those topics. In particular, I think that looking at SuccessfulPeople.Startups, SuccessfulPeople.Science, and the Meditation document are the most original parts of this post.
- SuccessfulPeople.Startups contains a categorization of some of Paul Graham's essays (e.g. Having ideas, fund-raising, executing, etc).
- The SuccessfulPeople.Science link contains a separate categorization of advice specifically for scientists (e.g. Picking ideas, the importance of being persistent, the importance of reading widely, etc).
- The meditation document lists a few high quality meditation resources that I've found (and I've read ~10 books on meditation. Most of it is crap. Some of the stuff I list is orders of magnitude better than the median meditation book I've read.).
- Whatever seems salient to you.
14 comments
Comments sorted by top scores.
comment by RomeoStevens · 2015-03-25T01:58:19.862Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Meditation: Shinzen Young is the best available material I know of on Mindfulness. Under articles he has a bunch of short primers examples (PDFs):
He uses a couple concepts that pattern match to woo, but he's very measurable results and clear instructions oriented.
Replies from: CurtisSerVaas↑ comment by CurtisSerVaas · 2015-03-25T13:07:42.547Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thanks for sharing! The "Progressive Stages of Mindfulness in Plain English" seems to actually be more about concentration meditation, so I'm glad you shared one of your favorite resources on a different type of meditation.
comment by MarkL · 2015-03-25T23:32:45.255Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Meditation: My blog is a terse, cryptic, rambling, ungrammatical rabbit hole, but it's highly opinionated and absolutely packed with links and resources:
https://meditationstuff.wordpress.com/articles/
Here are two practical posts:
https://meditationstuff.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/additive-meditation/ https://meditationstuff.wordpress.com/2013/08/25/how-to-do-foregroundbackground-meditation/
Shinzen Young, Daniel Ingram, Kenneth Folk, and Culadasa have systems that can get you very far depending on how well they fit you.
Replies from: CurtisSerVaas↑ comment by CurtisSerVaas · 2015-03-26T03:28:20.850Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Your blog is awesome! I link to it!
comment by Genaro Gonzalez (genaro-gonzalez) · 2022-12-27T23:54:25.226Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I find this very interesting, unfortunately the link doesn't work anymore. Do you another workflowy to share or something?
comment by Gunnar_Zarncke · 2015-03-24T21:38:00.164Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I had difficulties understanding how to use and interpret your workflowy. I'd have liked an extract though this admittedly breaks live update,
Replies from: CurtisSerVaas↑ comment by CurtisSerVaas · 2015-03-24T22:06:06.887Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I had difficulties understanding how to use and interpret your workflowy.
Here's a link that gives directions on how to use workflowy if you've never used it before. As far as interpretation, what was unclear?
I'd have liked an extract though this admittedly breaks live update,
I'm not sure what you mean by this. What is an extract?
Replies from: Gunnar_Zarncke↑ comment by Gunnar_Zarncke · 2015-03-24T22:14:58.882Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Most people cross-post article from their blogs more or less verbatim, but you just copied the head-lines which standing alone may make sense for you but not for everybody else.
Replies from: CurtisSerVaas↑ comment by CurtisSerVaas · 2015-03-25T13:00:02.240Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I did this because if I just intended to look at the titles and go to the section that interested them. It's like posting the table of contents for a book. I could have edited it to display two levels of depth, but even that would have been quite long.
I agree there could be an issue with me using my own shorthand. But, I fell like if you looked at the sub-bullets of depth2 of any particular heading, that it would explain whatever shorthand I used in the heading. For example !shootDog has the sub-bullet "Book: Don't shoot the dog".
Replies from: SanguineEmpiricist↑ comment by SanguineEmpiricist · 2015-03-29T03:13:49.759Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It made plenty of sense to me.
comment by ChristianKl · 2015-03-24T10:20:58.635Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Meditation
"What stage are you in, and where does your effort need to be focused today?" "What is a reasonable goal for today’s practice in terms of your progress up to now?" "It is important that we have goals and that we maintain an expectation of progress."
Where is that advice coming from? I would expect that most people do something that hinders meditation if you speak to them about focusing their efforts on some goal.
Replies from: CurtisSerVaas↑ comment by CurtisSerVaas · 2015-03-24T13:45:16.463Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
That's from the short-book "Progressive Stages of Mindfulness in Plain English". Specifically, it's from the section on stage1, where the goal is to develop a habit of meditating. This is the section of the book in which the author has the least original insight. The rest of the book lays out a detailed granularization of how to develop the skill of concentration.
In general, I think this advice doesn't seem to contradict advice the advice on how to deliberately practice any skill.
I would expect that most people do something that hinders meditation if you speak to them about focusing their efforts on some goal.
Why is that? How are you supposed to get better at concentration meditation unless you really want to? The goals he's talking about are things like "focus for 5 minutes without letting my mind wander once."
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2015-03-24T14:37:36.263Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"Letting go" is something that can't be forced.
Why is that? How are you supposed to get better at concentration meditation unless you really want to?
I have not said something about "really wanting to" being bad. The problem is attachment. If you have once a really great experience meditating and then get attached to the idea of recreating that experience you usually don't get anywhere.
Replies from: CurtisSerVaas↑ comment by CurtisSerVaas · 2015-03-24T16:59:48.238Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"Letting go" is something that can't be forced.
IIRC, the author doesn't use the phrase "letting go" anywhere in the book. He operationalizes all the terms/skills/states he talks about like differentiating between continuity of attention and sharpness of attention. I think the goal's he's talking about are very specific/operationalized.
I have not said something about "really wanting to" being bad.
My bad. That was a bit of a straw man on my part.
The problem is attachment. If you have once a really great experience meditating and then get attached to the idea of recreating that experience you usually don't get anywhere.
The author addresses that specific concern:
A warning is inorder here. It is very important not to sacrifice the development offull-minded awareness for sake of rapid progress in concentration. Todo so will lead to the development of concentration with dullness.This will produce very pleasurable meditative states that are dead-ends in themselves, leaving the meditator without the capacity for full-minded awareness necessary for completing the 10 stages of this method.
Overall, I think the first section of the book is skippable. You can use what's useful to you and leave the rest.