Group rationality diary, 11/28/12

For 9 days now I have set up my computer as a makeshift standing desk, using a pair of $10 Ikea coffee tables on top of my actual desk, and two $3 rubber mats and some cardboard to stand on. I have an appallingly sedentary lifestyle and often catch myself sitting at my desk with a terrible slumped posture, so I'm hoping to catch back problems before they occur, and also exert a bit more energy just day-to-day.

Each day my feet take a little longer to begin hurting, but they still hurt a lot by bed time. I have to take a few breaks to the couch to watch TV through the day to get by. I am planning to set up something more serious so I can put a stool at the desk and sit down from time to time without disrupting my usual activities (at the moment I don't own a stool, and there's nowhere for my legs to fit under the desk in any case).

Currently the only things preventing me from taking the desk down right now and just waiting until I have sorted a better solution are 1) my feet don't start to hurt until the end of the day, when I usually can't be bothered rearranging everything, and 2) I'm worried that without the driving force of aching feet every day I won't feel compelled to go through with arranging a better solution.

I started making a small monthly donation to the Against Malaria Foundation.

I realized that my success or failure at work does influence what I do in my free time more than I expected... even after I took measures to prevent it.

Specifically, in recent months I have built a habit to take a 20-minutes nap when I return home from the work. I set the alarm clock and go to bed; sometimes I sleep, sometimes I don't, but the rule is to forget the work and just daydream either about something pleasant or about my long-term goals, and what I could do in the remaining part of the day. Originally, this was supposed to be a preparation for later polyphasic sleep experiment; later I decided against polyphasic experiments, but I kept this habit as helpful. It does really reset the brain, and the rest of the day feels like a micro-weekend.

Anyway, I keep statistics of what I do each day, as a result of my self-improving attempt designed at the Rationality Minicamp. Essentially a list of "yes or no" questions (did I exercise on given day? did I meditate? did I learn something new? did I write an article for my blog? did I avoid eating sugar? did I avoid procrastinating on internet? did I socialize with my friends? etc.), and the daily score is the number of "yes" answers. -- And I have noticed that during the weeks where I have some problems at work my "daily score" is visibly lower than during the weeks where the work is OK. The difference is cca 3 points per day of a bad week versus 4.5 points per day of a good week. (Note: My success in work is not included in the score. This is the impact my success in work has on things I do outside of my work.)

Obvious or not? It feels likely that success at work improves one's mood, and a good mood is generally helpful for winning. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't make specific predictions of a kind: "I am more likely to exercise in the evening if I spend my work day coding in Java than if I spend my working day trying to fix a bug in NetBeans." But it seems to be true.

EDIT: This result is not completely experimentally proven: I keep records about my "daily score", but don't keep records about my success at work. There is a chance this is just a convenient excuse. However, if this is true, it gives me some insight into the mystery of "willpower". The hypothesis is that if I feel successful at doing X, I will have more "willpower" to work at Y. That the success seems to radiate into other areas of life, and so does failure. Instrumentally: "If you want to fix Y, fix X, even if there is there is no relation between X and Y other than that X makes you feel helpless and you can fix X now."

I started doing more deliberate meditation practice last summer and logging my sittings with the Android Meditation Helper app. I've been doing samatha jhana concentration meditation as described in Daniel Ingram's book. I've started hitting subjective states that resemble the description of the first jhana in the last few days. I've noticed that my concentration during the meditation has been consistently better than it used to be for a month or so. Before that, I had intermittent episodes of heightened concentration where I stopped having distracting thoughts, while most meditation sessions were a constant struggle to remember the meditation focus instead of having my mind wander.

My ideal meditation practice for a day is an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, but I haven't managed that very often. The stats show 168 days since I started logging meditation with the app. From these, 34 days had zero meditation logged, the median total daily meditation was 45 minutes and the mean total daily meditation was 48 minutes.

So that's a tentative verification that a somewhat consistent meditation practice really can help achieve otherwise unusual mental states, with benchmarks for noticeable intense concentration states starting to show up around a month into the practice and preliminary jhana states of full-body feeling of pleasure around six months in.

EDIT: I've since read a more detailed article on the jhana states. The experiences I had resemble the pitisukha precursor states described in the article, not the actual jhana states described in that article.

I read about a jet lag cure where you reset your circadian rhythm by fasting for 16 hours and then having a big breakfast at morning time in your target time zone. Now I'm experimenting with doing this sort of intermittent fasting most of the time to normalize my sleep cycle, basically not eating anything after lunch. It feels like I'm having an easier time waking up at the end of the fast, but I'm not sure how strong or stable the effect is.