Cheat codes

I've noticed that people who have a hard time in intro-to-physics classes usually fail in a fairly predictable way: they see a problem, don't know how to solve it, and stop. But there's a trick to solving physics problems when you're not sure how. The general method is:

1. Make a diagram or something, to depict what you know about the problem and make it easier to figure out stuff you don't know.

2. Look at the problem until you can derive something you don't already know. Even if you have no idea how it will help (or if it will help) do the calculations, and write them down.

3. Repeat step 2 until you see how to get to the answer.

The problem is when someone, not seeing a way all the way to the solution, stops trying instead of looking to make incremental progress.

I'm sure this applied to more than introductory physics problems. It's very similar to Terry Tao's advice on how to do math:

I don't have any magical ability. I look at a problem, and it looks something like one I've done before; I think maybe the idea that worked before will work here. Nothing's working out; then you think of a small trick that makes it a little better but still is not quite right. I play with the problem, and after a while, I figure out what's going on.

Most people, faced with a math problem, will try to solve the problem directly. Even if they get it, they might not understand exactly what they did. Before I work out any details, I work on the strategy. Once you have a strategy, a very complicated problem can split up into a lot of mini-problems. I've never really been satisfied with just solving the problem. I want to see what happens if I make some changes; will it still work? If you experiment enough, you get a deeper understanding. After a while, when something similar comes along, you get an idea of what works and what doesn't work.

It's not about being smart or even fast. It's like climbing a cliff: If you're very strong and quick and have a lot of rope, it helps, but you need to devise a good route to get up there. Doing calculations quickly and knowing a lot of facts are like a rock climber with strength, quickness and good tools. You still need a plan — that's the hard part — and you have to see the bigger picture.

The first place I saw the claim that a huge amount of life success is encapsulated in many simple life optimization "tricks" (or "cheat codes" in your terminology) was in David Allen's book "Getting Things Done" which is full of many such tricks (plus motivational exhortations) organized around the rough theme of efficiently increasing the number of one-off embarrassingly parallel actions you accomplish per day.

I prefer the term "technique" personally because when I tried using Mr. Allen's term "trick" it sometimes backfired and confused people into thinking that there was bad moral intent involved. They could teach me one, and I would be happy and exclaim "That's an awesome trick!" and they would get defensive instead of take it as the compliment I intended it to be. I suspect that your term "cheatcodes" will run into this problem even more dramatically because it literally contains the word cheat in it.

The term "technique" primes for things like skill development, kung fu, painting, and technology rather than "violation of social norms" so it is safer to use, but all of these terms are imprecise... For educational and linking purposes, I think it would be a good thing to track down and use a term that is (1) more precisely about this specific idea (2) was coined long ago by someone other than a LWer and (3) has positive resonances. Sadly, I'm not familiar with any term that fits this bill. Anyone else know a term? As a last resort, perhaps one could be imported from a foreign language or created from latin or greek?

In any case, here are some "techniques" I can think of off the top of my head:

• The first and most obvious thing is simply "the meta-technique" which is internalizing how much of human development is simply composed of the acquisition and use of techniques. They can be noticed and learned if you keep your eyes open. They can be sought out and practiced if you can articulate their need and come up with key words for searching for them. You can ask people for them. First you have to know that they exist and can be learned.

• In David Allen's book, he illustrated the concept with a particularly striking technique which is to put exercise clothes on as the very first step upon waking. This helps to make exercising a default action in the morning because there are fewer steps between you deciding to exercise later, and then actually exercising. Also, the effort of putting on the clothes (and making them dirty) creates a sunk cost that can deflect you from rationalizing yourself into not exercising that morning... it would be silly to put on exercise clothes and then not exercise :-P

• Something I learned from a really good boss I had was a social engineering optimization summed up in the aphorism "What gets measured gets done". Unfortunately, this one is dangerous to apply naively because of things like Goodhart's law and social complications around other optimizing but it is still useful to know about.

• My brother taught me an interesting one for situations where service relationships are important, tipping is appropriate, and you'll be making a series of purchases (restaurants in your neighborhood over weeks and months, a club over a night, etc): try to make your first purchase at a time when there is a lull in the customers and give a big tip and maybe make friendly smalltalk with the server. This makes them more likely to remember you with positive valence at later busier times.

• A technique I've gotten a huge amount of use of over the course of my life is to notice when some big picture aspect of my life is less than ideal and seek out a book on the subject. Read, experiment, retain the good stuff. I learned this technique before I came across "the meta-technique" but they obviously dovetail.

I really love the idea of spaced repetition, and I really love Wikipedia. I wish, however, that there was a fusion of the two spaces. Imagine surfing Wikipedia, reading an interesting fact you'd like to remember, and simply clicking a button next to it that added that fact to your daily spaced repetition learning database.

Also, while there are good spaced repetition programs/databases out there (like Anki), the databases aren't collaborative like a Wiki, and in general could be much better. Actually, collaborative abilities aside, I think even a very well kept but closed database could be quite valuable (more so than Rosetta Stone or other such software for learning a language for instance).

Tackling some of these ideas is something I'm planning on doing once I finish up my current projects, but if someone else jumps on them first, all the better.

I don't want to sound like too much of an evangelist, because I'm not amazingly skilled myself, but when I saw the heading "cheat codes" I immediately thought "lifting weights."

If you're interested in looking (conventionally) good, feeling well, and making progress in physical performance, and if you don't have any physical problems that make it impossible, free weights are sort of the "secret weapon" that most people aren't using. Quite a few people who can't lose weight (or fat) with cardio, can once they try weights (this is true of me, on a small scale.) The added advantage is that you save time. (>8 mile runs may be pleasant on occasion, but they sure do take a while.)

When you're feeling depressed for no good reason, force yourself to laugh. It triggers happiness almost as well as externally-induced laughter. Eventually, you will noticeably condition yourself to release seratonin (or endorphins, or something) every time you notice that you're seratonin-deficient.

It's been effective for me. I started it as a moody teenager and it quickly became self-perpetuating. Google suggests I'm not alone. It's got a whiff of wire-heading, I admit, but ideally you're using it to solve a brain chemistry defect, not an external problem.

Well, since you mentioned expert violinists...most people find that guitar is alarmingly easy to learn once they sit down with it. With a 1 hour lesson per week and 30 minutes of practice 3 times a week for 10 weeks, most people can get to the point where they are affirmatively entertaining -- much more fun to listen to than silence or small talk. Being able to play an instrument reasonably well is good for making friends, impressing people, expressing emotions, achieving flow, and improving self-esteem.

Unless you're a perfectionist, extremely busy, or extremely lazy, you will probably find that after the first 5 hours or so of time-investment, both the lessons and the practice can be a lot of fun -- you don't have to follow a rigid system; you can just see interesting techniques used and then copy whichever ones interest you as best you can, and music comes out.

For improving writing skills, the two most effective methods I know are:

1. Participate in National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write a 50,000 word work of fiction in 30 days, without fretting over quality too much. If you do this, you will learn a lot. It's unavoidable. (Plus, you get a book with your name on it. That's a great feeling.)

2. Write blog entries, and post them somewhere people will see and discuss them. Less Wrong, for instance, or Hacker News. If you know you're writing for an audience, it forces you to clarify your thoughts, and put more effort into writing well. This is good practice, and you get feedback; commenters on the internet are usually pretty blunt.

Each of these techniques exercises a different type of writing, so they're complementary.

Waking up: I found brute force works best - Old style alarm clock with clanging bells placed on opposite end of room. This trumped all sorts of complex maneuvers, including training self to have a fixed pattern response to an certain iPhone alarm.

Brilliant! I think we often have a hard time seeing these cheat codes. One reason for this might be the following (OK, a bit speculative, granted)

Gladwell or Taleb writes in some book that we have a gut feeling that there should be a correspondence between cause and effect: we have trouble of conceiving of significant effects (e.g. the president of the US being murdered) as having trivial or uninteresting causes (i.e. a lunatic). Instead we postulate that there must be a significant cause - e.g. a Sovjet conspiracy. Similarly, we have trouble conceving of significant events as the result of randomness, but postulate that they must have significant causes.

(I don't know if there is a name for this bias, or if it indeed has been proven in experiments. It seems intuitive that we have it, though.)

In line with this, it might be that we think that effort (i.e. cause) and benefit (i.e. effect) normally should match each other. If this is right, this would perhaps go some way towards explaining why humanity invented so little for such a long time, even though many inventions that increased productivity were relatively easy to come up with.

Of course people do invent, but it would seem to me that this is to large extent an attitude we've learnt from the scientific revolution and onwards - it is not our primary biological disposition.

Also, in many cases it is of course true that attempts at "easy solutions" are misguided (as mentioned in the OP) - so there is some ground for the heuristic that benefit and effort do match (perhaps particularly in a fiercely competetive and inventive society such as today's Western society). But like all heuristics, it is not always helpful (though it is so on average).

In any case, the fact that we seem to have trouble spotting these cheat codes makes it particularly useful to discuss them as is done here.

Any data on how long in advanced for spaced repetition to be effective, say if you're studying for an exam or something ?

The general trick was to figure out a new, stable state to change my habits to, then use willpower for a week or two until I settle into that stable state.

How do you define a "stable state"? Also, using willpower is not as simple as you make it out to be.

I think this post lacks content and originality.