Instrumental rationality/self help resources

Well, that list of references and resources for LessWrong derailed me reading the comments for this thread by about 12 hours.

I further propose to turn the content into a wiki page as that is an organisational form that lends itself to lists like these.

It seems like there is significant interest, so I will work on launching the website immediately. A "first draft" should be ready today or tomorrow unless technical difficulties come up.

A question to everyone: What would work better, a wiki, or a wiki with social networking features? Or does it not matter?

Should I create a separate discussion on this topic?

Blood tests. Check to see if you have healthy levels of cholesterol, vitamin D, magnesium, and whatever else your insurance will pay to have tested.

I like the idea of a post + set of comments to gather suggestions, and then another format to collect the finished list.

The Blueprint Decoded

This is a 20-hour video series by RSD in the controversial PUA genre. However, I think this video series is not at all like the image many people might have of the genre. The discussion is very very smart - discussing matters of psychology, philosophy, spirituality, etc., occasionally coming back down to earth to apply it to the practicalities of attracting women. At the same time, the speaker, Owen Cook a.k.a. Tyler Durden, comes off as very friendly, casual, reasonable, rational, and normal - the type of guy you might want to hang out with. The claims are contrarian, but at the same time the tone is very positive (i.e. not even remotely like, say, Roissy), and not misogynistic, although of course your mileage may very - if you're a radical feminist you will obviously be offended. There are pretty much zero explicit tactics discussed, no "do and say this to get girls". And the content is immensely applicable not only to attracting women, but to social skills and even life in general.

The tagline boasts "4 day total immersion, advanced identity-level change" and I feel like it delivered this. The videos approach the same core themes from so many different angles, over and over again, that by the time you're done you feel like your mental state and the way you relate yourself to the world has been transformed. If I had to define the change in one word, it would be "self-respect".

For a variety of reasons, I have had very little social interaction since I've watched this a month or so ago, unfortunately, but the interactions that I have had have been very different. I have been much more relaxed, happier, looser, have occupied a higher-status role in the groups that I have been in, and I think have all-around presented myself better. I haven't had the chance to actually really talk to any girls, however. So it remains to be seen if I will actually improve in the area that quote-unquote matters.

If you're a straight man and you might say that you "don't understand women" or "don't know how to talk to girls", I would recommend that you torrent this and at least watch the first few hours to see if it appeals to you. If you feel shy, awkward, or low status much of the time, I would doubly recommend it. If you're unfamiliar with the PUA genre, I recommend that you read The Game by Neil Strauss beforehand just so you get some sense of what the subculture is like and the attitudes that this video series is a response to. (By the way, The Game is a fairly well-written memoir that stands on its own, even if you aren't trying to learn attraction techniques from it.)

I intended general to be resources that discuss life in general or multiple areas, like 59 Seconds or The Happiness Hypothesis, and other to be resources that solely address issues that I didn't mention.

Dual computer monitors. I've had this kind of setup for several years at work and home. It seems to really help, although it does encourage multitasking.

Getting Things Done—David Allen

Highly, highly recommended. This is the gold standard of organizational advice, and it lives up to its reputation. My productivity has skyrocketed in the five months I've been using this system. I attribute maybe half of that improvement to this book.

Allen describes his system in detail, explaining why each piece is useful. The system is modular, and most people who use it have modified it to fit their particular workflow. The book is longer than it needs to be, but still only something like 200-300 pages. Note that organizational advice is different from motivational advice (although bad organization can sap motivation).

Key insights:

—Breaking down projects into small, achievable "next actions" is a key technique for planning effectively and preventing ugh fields.

—Writing down every task in a single list that you will actually check regularly lets you stop worrying about tasks, reduce your cognitive load, and ensure that nothing gets lost.

The Procrastination Equation. My post How to Beat Procrastination is simply a summary of this book.

Master Your Workday Now! - Michael Linenberger

Recommended to me by pjeby, this is the most CfAR-ey personal productivity book that I've read. I would recommend it over GTD, as it incorporates many of the same insights into IMO a better overall system.

Speed reading apps. I use Acceleread.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy - David D. Burns

Absolutely fantastic. The concepts are highly rational and compatible with a LessWrong worldview and are explained very well. The guy writes in a really friendly, likeable style. He does an excellent job arguing with the hypothetical depressed reader and logically convincing him that the beliefs he firmly holds are maladaptive and wrong, without expecting him to "just think more positively" or anything similar.

The principles explained in the book are those of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is the only form of psychotherapy proven to work better than placebo. Essentially what CBT says (if I correctly understand it) is that depression essentially is a form of irrational thinking, specifically ten specific irrational thinking patterns, called "cognitive distortions". These include things like "overgeneralization", where a depressed person will do a small thing wrong and conclude that everything they do is wrong, or "mind reading", where a depressed person will insist that somebody hates them or is thinking negative things about them, without proof to back it up. The book explains how to notice and counter those biases in yourself.

Personally, I have been increasingly overcoming depression for maybe the past four years or so, and I read this book far too late when I was mostly all the way out of the pit. I would say my mood has improved a little in the three months since I read this book.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who is depressed at all, and I would mildly recommend this to anyone else.

Moodkit

This iPhone app is based on CBT. It has many features. But the most useful feature for me is something called "Thought Checker". Suppose in a certain situation you felt a surge of negative emotions. Then into the app you first describe the situation. Then you choose, from a large list, some of the emotions you experienced and rate their intensity. Then you describe the thoughts that ran through your head. You then select from a list of cognitive distortions, the distortions that would apply to the thoughts you just described. Then you write a new, clearer way to think about the same situation but without the distortions. Then finally your re-rate the intensity of the emotions you listed. Almost always it attenuates significantly.

I have found this to be an excellent way to defuse extreme emotions. For example, sometimes a single negative thought about my career or relationship status would ruin the productivity of an entire day for me. No longer. Repeated use might make the whole procedure automatic in your brain.

The other features are tips and advice to improve mood. You can commit to taking specific actions and check back. You can track your mood as a function of time. There are also journaling templates which are very handy. All in all, easily worth the $5 price tag. Drawback: you need an iPhone or iPad.

Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It - Kamal Ravikant

Essentially involves rewiring your brain by insisting to yourself that you love yourself. Got the author out of a depressed state where he hadn't left the house in months(?) even though it felt like bs when he first tried. Others have had similar success with it (note the high number of reviews).

Personally I appear to be naturally predisposed towards happiness; why I recommend the book is that it's the only thing I've heard of that seems to produce the same kinds of natural bursts of elation that I experience anyway.

The book is cheap and short, and the potential return is very high (if you're looking for stuff under the Happiness heading) so I would say that it's worth checking out.

Self-compassion. See here and here and links therein.

Self-compassion, as defined by Kristin Neff contains 3 main components: (1) Self-Kindness; (2) Common Humanity, i.e. recognizing that your troubles aren't that unique and that many people suffer/have suffered similar problems and (3) Mindfulness: mainly, seeing clearly and not-denying your current state as it is.

I think self-compassion based meditation has increased my happiness as I've always tended to be overly self-critical.

SucceedSocially.com

This website is sort of an all-encompassing general overview of how to develop a social life and common problems people face in doing so. The writing is kind of boring, and a little frustratingly vague sometimes, but at the same time it's utterly reasonable and probably applies to almost everybody's situation.

My experience with this website was that I would read a bunch of it, saying to myself "okay, I know... yes, that's obvious... okay, I'm not an idiot, maybe I don't need to read this site after all", and then all of a sudden come across something that made me suddenly realize that I had been doing something terribly wrong for the last four years and immediately mentally correct it.

I would recommend that anyone who doesn't have a wide social circle read through this whole website (it's maybe about as long as a book), and anyone who is socially awkward in some situations scroll through the table of contents and see if any articles jump out that seem relevant to their interests.

Since I have read this website three months ago, I would definitely say my social skills have improved.

How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie

The thesis of this book seems to be something like this: "Many people try to make themselves look good in order to get someone to like them, even at the expense of making the target look bad. Instead, you should make the target look good, even at the expense of making yourself look bad. This works because people like feeling important and high status, and if you can make them feel that way, they'll enjoy being around you." The book is divided up into thirty or so chapters, each which revolves around a single-sentence "principle" that reflects the thesis. Each chapter then consists of six or so supposedly true anecdotes in which someone makes someone else like them by applying the principle.

I don't know if I necessarily agree with Carnegie's principle. It proves too much - cool jocks don't enjoy hanging around nerds even though it presumably makes them feel important. There is definitely something to be said for appearing to be a desirable high-status person yourself. However, after reading this book, I sort came up with a weaker version of Carnegie's thesis that was a really big epiphany for me. So I have this book to thank for that.

The book is also fairly boring and repetitive, as you might imagine given my description of its structure, and it's something like eighty years old, which should make it a little suspicious, because times have changed since then. (Although it does have a sort of old-fashioned charm which makes it entertaining.)

My social skills have improved since about three months ago when I read this book.

I would not recommend this book, unless you have a tendency to act arrogant or self-absorbed and need to give yourself messages to act in the opposite direction. Or if you just want to act nicer in general.

The Personal MBA

is written in such a way as to be easily digestible in small chunks, and should be highly useful to anyone who doesn't already know a lot of econ and find themselves applying it. I would say it's still worth a skim even if you're fairly confident in this area as a sort of checklist. It doesn't matter if you're not trying to run a business, the lessons are widely applicable.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com fixed what I was doing with personal finance. In particular, not saving for retirement consistent with what my goals are on reflection. The best part is that what he tells you to do for investing is really easy and involves almost no choice, which meant I got started immediately while reading more about other life changes. He also drills into you that the naive cost/benefit calculation for outsourcing small home repairs done by a lot of us geeks misses less obvious costs of outsourcing and under-counts the benefit of learning skills, which was a big update for me.

Interestingly, the wiki turns it around and says that epistemic rationality is a special case of instrumental rationality.

Epistemic rationality is just one of many means available for winning. There will be trade offs between these means, first in terms of opportunity costs, but second where being employing the means is a handicap in a situation. Under totalitarian theocracy, it's likely instrumentally rational to believe in the Great Gazoo with the rest of them. In general, there are costs in not aligning your beliefs to the society you live in, even when those beliefs are false. Whether the benefit of more accurate prediction from epistemic rationality outweighs those costs is a factual matter of the situation.