Group Rationality Diary, December 1-15

I have been rereading HPMOR and come up with an elegant hypothesis that I found to be ever more fitting as I continued to read. However, I just realized that I have been looking only for tests that confirm my hypothesis, and not looking for things that would cause my hypothesis to be wrong. This is not the sort of realization that I often have.

During longer personal discussions with my aunt I spontaneously started to come to and end of the phone call by summarizing what I learned from the talk, key points raised and the next steps to do. This has become quite a habit and my aunt has picked it up herself.

Previously, I'd decided that anything that came easily to me, must be easy for others as well. I figured that I should find something that was challenging for me, as it'd be challenging for everyone else, and I'd be able to succeed by virtue of sheer work ethic and determination.

In hindsight, people are talented at different things, and "Computer science isn't challenging, so let's do biochemistry instead!" is a terrible thought process.

A few different things:

I have had a fairly solid Anki habit for the past three months or so.

I have ankified a few self-improvement concepts (Lukeprog's posts on procrastination, some of Kaj Sotala's stuff on habits, random other tidbits), and I believe the constant exposure to those ideas has started having an effect, in that I seem to have started doing a lot of the advice in there (not all though). I may report on it later on.

But more dramatically effective, I recently started using HabitRPG, and have used it to get a few new daily habits:

• Always get up before the alarm (previously I'd loaf around in bed for up to half an hour)
• Always go to bed before midnight
• Update my Gratitude Journal every day (I had been doing that semi-regularly for a few weeks before though)
• Do some exercise every morning

It's also a good motivator for just getting things done in general. My choice of habits have been somewhat influenced by KajSotala's article on The Power of Habit, and by talking to some LWers who read that book and talked about Keystone Habits around exercise and sleeping. Also, I was influenced by Lukeprog's talking about success spirals to start by focusing on somewhat easier-to-achieve things (and also, Swimmer's discussion of goals versus systems.

During a discussion of dinner plans, I noticed I was reacting negatively to a suggestion of a restaurant I know I actually like. I guessed that the negative reaction is the result of having primed myself for a totally different type of food, and subsequently thought of "what I'm primed for" as a separate category than "what I would actually find enjoyable" for I think the first time.

I feel like my expression of Agreeability has been unpleasantly low lately, so until I come up with something more scientific I'm going to try noticing when I'm feeling disagreeable and reflecting on whether it could be an effect of priming, and compartmentalizing accordingly.

For a few weeks I've somewhat fumblingly kept up a beeminder goal to throw away one thing every day. The discarded item has to be something I wouldn't have thrown away in the typical course of the day, so a food wrapper generally wouldn't count for example. Items which would and have qualified include a bunch of old crappy hangers from my closet, large piles of junk mail which needed to be sorted and discarded, old toothbrushes, and a terrible painting that I made and kept because it's hard to throw away your own art even if you know it's terrible. There were many more items and some of them were piddlingly small. The hardest part of this goal is actually determining whether I'm going to give myself credit for throwing away, say, a wad a receipts from my bedside table. It just doesn't feel very significant. But the fact is that it probably would have continue to sit there (and probably grow) without this goal, so I tend to let minor things count.

That said, I have derailed twice and ponied up the $5 penalty. Finding something to throw away can be surprisingly cognitively draining at the end of a long day. I do feel that I'm getting better at throwing things away without excessive rumination. I originally set this goal after moving several times in a short span and growing sick of how many possessions I have, so an underlying goal is to simply reduce my attachment to my stuff.

One thing I've had partial success with this month is changing the vocabulary/tone of my inner dialog. My original plan was to replace "Austin, you **ing retard!", which was getting sub-vocalized far too often, with "well, that was wrong.." or something of the like. It worked at first, but now I find myself saying "really??!?!?" instead, and basically meaning the same thing I was originally saying. I'm not sure what effect it's had on my self-confidence, if any, but it was worth a try and I did consciously change a behavior.