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Was "Rest Days vs Zombie Days" removed from LessWrong, or at the very least available online anywhere else? I can't find it either via Google search or LessWrong's site search. All I see is "Rest Days vs. Recovery Days" by Unreal from 2019.
Here are the two most effective "quick trick" tactics. I say "quick trick" because they tackled the symptoms not the root cause (albeit effectively) via brute force, leading me to eventually burn out and abandon them:
Boss as a Service: The most extreme tactic I've tried. You pay someone each month to be your "boss", meaning you send them your goals for each day/week and then you report back to them at the end of the day/week on how you did. Was very effective, but was too draining so I stopped using it.
Focusmate: Lets you do 50-minute work sessions with your camera on with a stranger. You each say your goals in the beginning of the session and then work the rest. It increased the probability that I would actually work on my goals but wasn't foolproof. Since the sessions required a taxing amount of focus, I eventually stopped scheduling them.
Meditating and exercising daily as well as the Pomodoro method didn't seem to have much of an effect on staying focused on goals. Also, taking the meds with food seemed to make me less bouncy and more likely to actually work on my goals.
Another solution may be to somehow turn off your fierceness, by devoting yourself to meditation or psychotherapy or something like that. Maybe that's the right answer for some people. I have no idea. But it doesn't seem the optimal solution to me. If you're given a sharp knife, it seems to me better to use it than to blunt its edge to avoid cutting yourself.
This seems like sunk cost fallacy. If your goal is to maximize your happiness in life, then you shouldn't base your decision off of the abilities you have now if utilizing them won't make you happier. This seems like an easy path for the stereotypical Gifted Kid to fall prey to: having succeeded by unhappily working themselves extremely hard through high school and/or college, and then feeling like they need to continue performing at that level since they've already built up so much knowledge, accolades, job connections, etc.
I also have this problem and the same experience with ADHD meds. I tried a bunch of tactics that I can go into if you want but they all had varying degrees of success. Annoyed of trying quick tricks, I tried going for the root cause.
I thought the root cause was related to low willpower, so I tried multiple things that have been shown to improve willpower in studies (meditation, exercise, squeezing a hand grip) but I didn't see much benefit after at least a month of doing these actions daily so I stopped.
I then thought that maybe it's not so much low willpower but rather low conscientiousness (one of the Big Five personality traits). They seemed similar but studies distinguished between them so I tried to peruse the research on ways to improve conscientiousness. Unfortunately, the studies I read all seemed to be tied to some unique therapy that was only broadly described and I wasn't sure how to find someone who specializes in those techniques. There was one 2021 study that used an app to successfully improve this, but the app isn't released it.
If you find a solution to this problem, please let me know.
Are you sure about the Harris-Benedict formula? It seems like Mifflin-St Jeor is the most reliable. Nonetheless, I'm curious if you have any recommended articles/books on diet and mental health?
These are nice, for the friends recommendation one just be cautious of offering unsolicited advice and other-optimizing
What dose do you use when you do it that early? At the end of section 3 in the post you linked that recommends taking it that early, it seems like the conclusion around the proper dose for this case is murky.
I'm not very familiar with academia, but have you considered sending this to the authors of the paper to a) see if there are any mistakes you made and b) help them avoid similar errors in the future?
But I acknowledge that this could lead to a long email exchange that you may not want.
This article may help you, albeit Clubhouse is currently invite-only
Do you know roughly what the breakdown is for the types of rooms on Clubhouse? e.g. what % of the rooms are casual conversations/shooting the breeze (think "Just Chatting" on Twitch.tv) vs. people talking about topics that you can learn from vs other?
Can you elaborate on how you use it to help install TAPs? I've been experimenting with cards with a trigger in a specific situation on one side and the action on the other, but I'm wondering if there are better ways.
Very interesting idea. I've also built my own piece of productivity software for myself since ideas out there were lacking, although it's centered around strict accountability that I don't think the App Store would allow.
The Paul Graham article you linked is centered around startups, so if you are using this for the possibility of creating a startup then there is one caveat: the value proposition you describe is eliminating decision fatigue by removing features irrelevant to you. But as you create stuff for more and more people, then you'll add more and more features that are each used by your audience but to different degrees (e.g. perhaps 20% of your audience can't live without feature 1 and the rest never use it, but a completely separate 30% of users love features 2 but no one else uses it). Eventually your original value proposition will erode and it will be similar to other solutions. But if you aren't doing this for a startup, then you can ignore this.
To elaborate on this, the odds of cryonics succeeding are estimated to be between .23% in the pessimistic scenario and 15% in the optimistic. Contrast this with the 1 in quadrillion (or a similarly high number) chance of the mugger being honest in Pascal's mugging.
Perhaps I am overthinking this, but when it comes to applying your knowledge gained through spaced repetition, is there a difference in how effectively you can apply it in these two situations?
- You spend time memorizing what a function is. A function comes up in a problem in a very similar format to how it looked on your Anki card. You are able to understand it because the prompt of the function in the problem causes you to recall your understanding from studying and then apply it.
- You spend time memorizing what a function is. A problem comes up that can be solved by using functions. However, the problem doesn't explicitly mention functions like in #1; it's up to you to recall your understanding of functions and recognize that this is a time to use them without seeing the prompt that you studied with.
In case this example is too weird or confusing, you can think of the using Anki for memorizing cognitive biases; you'll be able to recall the definition of them, but how much will spaced repetition help you recognize when cognitive biases pop up in your life (so that you can employ whatever counter-measures you see fit)?
Honestly, I could do another 100 tweets on what this looks like in each case. The delicate dance of beliefs, emotions, strategies, behaviors, and tools that can be combined to internalize a new way of being.
I would love to see further discussion of what the solution looks like. Is there any writing out there that discusses this?
I'm not a psychologist/psychiatrist, but isn't personality not very mutable past the age of around 7? At least without psychedelics or brain damage or something?
I've read that this is a common myth and that personality continues to change throughout our lives (1, 2). According to some psychologists, this could be related to the end of history illusion.
The book Personality Isn't Permanent talks a lot about personality myths and ways to change one's personality. In the section on how to change one's personality, he suggests (albeit doesn't cite studies) that the reason personality changes less in adulthood than childhood may be because our environment becomes more constant and environment can shape personality.
It seems that they can use vitrification as opposed to solely freezing the body, and this is more effective at preservation. Here's a paper about scientists vitrifying a rabbit kidney then rewarming it and successfully putting it back into a rabbit (h/t wait but why). However, it seems that each organ must be studied so that it can be successfully vitrified given its unique complexities, so we can't just apply that paper's solution to every organ.
This seems to be almost exactly what you are suggesting. At the end of the article he seems to offer an open invitation to receive their vaccine. While there is no mention of their vaccine's efficacy in the article, the article was written in late July so the team may have more updates by now if you reach out to them directly.
I've used the DelayWebpage extension. It can delay the loading for websites you choose but doesn't offer some features mentioned in the article such as resetting if you alt+tab or increasing the wait time each check.
I'm not sure if I'm understanding your question correctly; are you asking whether you're obligated to act in accordance with what worked in the past for you? One response could be that if you always follow what worked in the past, then you'd be akin to the recluse, constantly exploiting and never exploring. This means you could miss out on great opportunities that are not part of your past experience.
That's interesting, do you have a link so I can read more about that?
I wonder if this effect is restricted to younger people who are supposedly more malleable
I read about a study in Thinkertoys, a handbook for creative thinking, about how employees who thought they weren't creative but were told to tell themselves that they're creative had more ideas compared to those who continued thinking they were not creative. (I could be paraphrasing incorrectly since it was a while ago). Writing your ideas down could be a way to reinforce to yourself the idea that you are creative, in case you have doubts about that.
For your first question, Cold Turkey is my favorite for Windows! Freedom is also a popular one, but I prefer Cold Turkey since it has more robust settings and doesn't allow you to uninstall it during an active session.
If you want something lighter you could use browser extensions like LeechBlock but it's far too easy just to switch browsers with those.
I recently read this Psyche article related to your question. While not an academic paper, they do cite them throughout the article. Here's the text most relevant to the preserve vs. develop willpower debate:
According to a 2017 meta-analysis of many relevant studies, self-control training seems to be effective at improving ‘self-control stamina’ – the ability to exert inhibitory self-control for longer periods.
So, is that the solution to greater self-discipline? Exercise your self-control muscle and get better at inhibitory self-control?
Unfortunately, it’s not so simple. You might have noticed how I switched back and forth between ‘inhibitory self-control’ and the broader concept of ‘self-control’, but the two are not synonymous. Though boosting your inhibitory self-control or ‘willpower’ might sound appealing – perhaps you imagined yourself using inhibitory self-control to force yourself not to eat the cookies, just like you would if you forced yourself to brush with the opposite hand – it’s not clear that inhibitory self-control actually works this way in everyday life.
Take the findings from a 2017 study that involved volunteers recording their daily experiences of temptation for a week. The individuals who experienced more temptation were less likely to achieve their long-term goals, even if they also reported using more inhibitory self-control. This suggests that using inhibitory self-control to resist those cookies might help you in the moment, but not in the long run. So even if you use inhibitory training (eg, the teeth-brushing challenge) to build a brawny self-control muscle, your heroic efforts are likely to leave you looking more like Sisyphus than Hercules.
There is this HBS article I found which talks about it from a management lens and offers some okay recommendations at the end
Do you have any further reading on "the opposite advice would be useful" besides the SSC article? I've found it difficult to navigate the tension between two sides of some pieces of advice.
And the solution that worked for me, is to make it part of your identity to be an agent. Make it a point of principle to do things, not because the thing is necessarily the perfect action, but because I choose the life where I do things, over the life where I always wait for the perfect opportunity.
This seems like shifting from act utilitarianism to rule utilitarianism, where you don't try to calculate the value from each option in relation to all other options but instead act upon a principle (or core values in business speak).
Notice the small problems, and fix them. Notice when everyone isn’t enjoying what they’re doing, and be the first person to voice this. Notice when the jug of water is empty, and be the one to fill it. Notice when you say “oh, I can do this tomorrow” and do it today. Notice when you think “I should get round to this some time” or “I’ve always wanted to learn juggling” and actually do it. Notice when something is inefficient, notice the thing nobody is doing, and be the person who does it!
Maybe I'm overthinking, but with this logic I imagine this happening:
0. Imagine someone who thinks “I can do this tomorrow” or “this is not a priority”
1. Read this article and start to take action on all the things they view as wrong in their life, following their newly developed principle of action
2. Find that they don't have enough time to take care of all these things
3. Become disillusioned and conclude that they have to adjust their principle to only tackle problems that are worth it
4. Start shrugging off most problems as not being worth it
5. Frequently shrug off problems thinking “I can do this tomorrow” or “this is not a priority”
And the person has now ended in the same place they started... How would one avoid this?
Seems similar to Murphyjitsu
I tried a parade of experiments and tracked all the factors that I thought might influence my energy levels – including sleep times, sleep duration, hydration, exercise, medications, melatonin, doing a sleep study, temperature, naps, and nutrition.
I'd love to see a separate post to learn more about the details and results of this so that I could try it myself.
I've tried doing this but for focus instead of fatigue, but it became too tedious to track all these factors every day. This was especially true since I felt that a) there were so many confounding factors in my day to day life that I couldn't control (e.g. the type of work I'm doing that day or the # of conversations) and b) with so many variables, I'd need a very large sample size to create an accurate enough model. Now I just track 2-3 variables at a time that I believe are likely to have the biggest impact on my focus.
Interesting; it's similar to if you make a calculated bet in poker when the odds are in your favor but still lose. In that case, your decision was still correct as well as the means you used to arrive at your decision. So there wouldn't be much to write about. Perhaps in this case the loser could write about why they think the winner actually made the wrong decision to continue playing the hand.
I agree that you can't distinguish between those things. But I wonder if it could be argued that as long as someone is putting in effort and deliberately reflecting and improving after each outcome, then you can't fault them since they are doing everything in their power; even if they are modeling incorrectly or behaving badly, if they did not have opportunities to learn to do otherwise beforehand then is it still reasonable to fault them if they act that way? The pragmatic part of me says that everyone has "opportunities to learn to do otherwise" with the knowledge on the internet, so we can in fact fault people for modeling poorly. But I'm not sure if this line of reasoning is correct.