Group Rationality Diary, September 16-30

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for September 16-30.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Previous diary: September 1-15

Next diary: October 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for September 16-30.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Previous diary: September 1-15

Next diary: October 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

Productivity tricks that still seem to work for me after several months of use:

Autofocous TODO lists on a paper notebook. There's a single notebook page with 20-30 TODO items, and that'll be the only TODO list I pick tasks from until all the items are done, abandoned or migrated to a new page.
Pomodoro-style timeboxed work sessions listening to a noise track. Trying out this one linked on Cal Newport's blog now.

I also recently found out about Bullet Journal notation for notebooks and started using that alongside the autofocus. Basically you collect everything chronologically in a single notebook and build a table of contents and add special topic pages as needed. I'm using the monthly calendar pages idea from Bullet Journal to have a page where I have a single-line description of what I did on the day for each day of the month.

EDIT: The notes the noise track plays every 10 minutes started to grate after many repeats. Switched to this one

I've not much enjoyed Autofocus, but agree that Bullet Journal is the JAM. Thanks!

0hamnox12y

I've heard of Autofocus, it didn't stick for me. Bullet journal is a really useful resource, thanks for linking it!

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Group Rationality Diary, September 16-30

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Group Rationality Diary, September 16-30

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