Group Rationality Diary, October 1-15, plus frequency poll

So my plan yesterday was to take a day with no computer, tablet, Kindle, or physical books in order to get some metacognition done about why I was having trouble getting started on my MIT talk.

Result: Spent almost the entire day lying in bed in a pseudo-REM state, then fell asleep a couple of hours early.

Next day, lo and behold, writing the talk doesn't seem so daunting. I think I was just exhausted, and having access to a computer, maybe even a Kindle or book, was sufficient to prevent previous rest days from being restful.

I had a problem I was trying to work out. I thrashed about on it for a long time without making apparent progress. I decided I could ask a forum of people more experienced in this.

So I began I composing the question. I didn't want to seem like a total noob, so I set about forestalling the obvious suggestions by explaining what hadn't worked. I sort of set up an imaginary interlocutor and had it suggest things. Eventually, it suggested something and instead of my showing why it didn't apply to my situation, I showed that it did. So I copied the solution out of the forum post box and closed the browser window.

Now, the process of composing this question wasn't exactly quick or easy, but it did take a lot less time than I'd been using before.

I wonder if I can replicate this on purpose. I imagine writing to (or start writing to) someone more knowledgeable than me whom I don't want to seem stupid to, and explain the problem. It seems a lot like just writing a summary of the question for myself, but by giving it that additional purpose, it became more focused and self-critical.

Or maybe there's nothing to it, and I got lucky that I happened to be sitting on everything I needed and was one inference away from the answer.

I just resisted bystander apathy. But probably all I did was call the cops on some cops.

I was driving home from work, and I saw some people getting pulled over, but the people pulling them over didn't look like police. It didn't look any different than what I would see if some plain-clothes police officers had seen someone speeding, but I had a really bad feeling about it for some reason, so it didn't seem like a good idea to do nothing. My phone wasn't charged, though, and my destination didn't have phone reception, so I let my phone charge for a few minutes when I got to my destination (which was nearby). I also asked a friend what they thought I should do (it seemed like a good idea to a basic "am I being stupid?" check), looked up the local non-emergency police number, and wrote down everything I could remember about what I'd seen. After charging the phone, I had to drive back to somewhere where I could get reception, so I didn't make the call until half an hour after the fact.

I think the main thing that would've helped me handle this better is having thought out in advance what to do in common emergency-like situations. Something really general, like "if there are IDs of any sort, consider writing them down", could have been useful here. Also, "borrowing things from other people is possible" (like charged phones), and "consider safety before entering a situation" (having nowhere to pull over was the first reason I decided not to - there's some chance I could have acted too quickly if there were a convenient driveway). Putting phone numbers for police into my phone would also be a good thing to do in the future.

I dropped my home internet service about a month ago. I activated my cell phone's hotspot capability, so I still effectively have internet, just much slower and I'm much more conscious about using it.

Pros:

• Saving $45/mo.
• I spend more time doing productive things.

Cons:

• Streaming multimedia is no longer a viable option for entertainment.
• The internet isn't as fun anymore.

Interesting artifacts:

• I'm getting to sleep earlier. Now that the internet is significantly less fun, it's much easier to shut it off.
• Since text loads more easily than video and graphics, I'm reading more stories.
• I'm also working through my backlog of things to do, rather than acquiring yet more things to do.

I started microdosing melatonin based off of Eliezer's success. I have the same sleep disorder. So far it is playing havok and giving me different results every night, but I am going to stick with it for a month to see if it evens out. Taking the melatonin at 11 and going to sleep actually feeling sleepy at 2am is still a huge improvement over the status quo before.

I have a notetaker device that was out of date when I got it in 2006, but since it's primary functions are as a word processor, calculator, and occasional calendar/alarm/stopwatch, that isn't too problematic. The problem is that the battery stopped holding a charge last year, and I haven't been able to replace it. My productivity has declined noticeably since then. It also seems to lend itself to working with external distractions: when I was attending college, I could get quite a lot done during classtime without it negatively impacting academic performance, it made going places or watching TV with family both tolerable and not-useless, and is much better for working with music than my laptop.

I decided to try using it this morning, but that did not go as planned. This evening, people left the house with comedy central playing (the Stewart-Dawkins interview replayed), so I decided to try bringing it out again. And this worked pretty much perfectly, even after people returned.

I should fix that battery. The company that sold the device will do replacements for prices several times that of batteries with the same specs on the internet, but I don't know if the battery is too unique for random internet batteries to work (and I can't find a screwdriver). This should not be a difficult problem. That it is says more about me than the device/battery/company.

I am beginning to track my motivation so I can have something of an idea of how often I ought to 'refuel' as well as what sorts of things work for 'refueling.'

I began to schedule a chunk of time to make a to-do list for the next day in my daily to-do lists. They work great when I actually make them, but I remember to make them less than half the time.

What types of things have y'all successfully beeminded?

I tried increasing the number of consecutive push-ups I could do, eventually got sick and failed. Beeminder isn't very forgiving in such situations. I tried forcing myself to write every day and managed to fail that despite putting up an actual pledge and setting a really low bar for what counts as writing. I love the idea of beeminder and it has actually helped me in the sense that it worked for a while in each previous attempt, which is better than not working at all. I've even read Nick Winter's The Motivation Hacker yet I can't seem to find goals in my life that it makes sense to beemind.

So, to return to the question, what things have you successfully beeminded?

I've been using a balance board with my standing desk. It subjectively feels like it increases my peek productivity when I'm really into my work, although I haven't tested this. At the very least, it's given me more exercise.

I'd prefer for rationality diaries to be posted:

[pollid:556]

If you have further specifications to your preference (e.g. biweekly on Tuesday) please mention them in comments.

Thanks!

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