(I trust I will be forgiven for the overwrought and repetitive prose that follows. In my defense, on this issue, I really do try to think in such terms, and arguably all this drama is a large part of why the method works as well as it does.)
My improvement program, which has been working fairly well so far, although I am still continually refining things as I will detail below, is based on the opposite principle. Rather than setting explicit measurable goals, I try to continually remind myself that every minute and every dime is precious, and every minute and every dime that you don't spend doing the best thing you can possibly be doing is a mark of sin upon your soul, and furthermore that this is not some extremist dictate, but rather a tautology---that's what the word "best" means: that which you should be doing. Rather than goals to satisfice, I want to have a utility function to maximize. I do not place myself under some dreaded burden to fulfill some oath: I'm just trying to not be stupid. There is no such thing as "leisure"---everything is booked under "Dayjob" or "Lifework" or "Education" or "Maintenance," for every ...
SECOND ADDENDUM--- While I still endorse many of the ideals and sentiments expressed in the parent, I now believe that the comment as written is predicated on a bad model of human psychology. I notice that I am currently confused about the topic of human motivation and have nothing further to say.
Can you give us some numbers? How long have you been doing this? What is your average day (better yet: yesterday) like?
I tried something like this when I was very young - middle school, maybe. I think the most embarrassing part was where I decided I would never have any interest in the opposite sex, because that would be a distraction. It lasted for about a week before I decided maybe there was something to this "being human" thing after all, and put it all down to childhood exuberance and never tried anything of that sort again.
...but if you can actually pull it off, you are my new hero.
I don't actually have any numbers on hand, and to be clear, I don't claim to have achieved any level of sheer awesomeness, but rather only that I'm a better person than I used to be. (This is by no means a high bar.) You ask, how long have I been doing this---but I can't point to any discrete start; my personality has been in a sort of gradual flux in what I've been calling "these days of Eliezer Yudkowsky and my purity born of pain"---dating back to my nervous breakdown of 29 November 2007.
This was actually sort of my point: life is continuous. When you have a discrete goal, an explicit program with a start date and an end date, you can just fail. Whereas when you have an open-ended concept of things-worth-doing, there's no failure, only degrees of win. You seemed to be saying that when you have an open-ended goal, that just gives you an excuse to cheat. Whereas I'm working under the theory that if I want to cheat, I've already lost.
All this might tie into why I can't deal with school: they give you a curriculum, and all the good thoughts you have that aren't on the curriculum don't count, and everything that is on the curriculum that you didn't do is a mark of sin upon ...
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
That's a stupid quote. The fact that it's often attributed to Ben Franklin is even more ridiculous. Insanity (psychological problems) rarely includes that as a symptom, and even when it does it's only a small part of the problem. (OCD doesn't count, because the compulsion doesn't include a belief that this time will be any different.)
Replace "insanity" with "stupidity" and the quote isn't quite as stupid.
My brain clearly has different procedures for dealing with vague responsibilities it can weasel out of, and serious responsibilities it can't, and the oath served to stick studying on the "serious" side of the line.
I doubt it's the oath or the rituals. The key piece (in my experience) that makes this work, is the part where you considered conflicts and consequences. You made explicit under which specific conditions you would do it, and which ones you wouldn't.
To translate this back into Ainslie's model, the success of bargaining at any point in time is dependent on the degree of activation of "interests". If at the time you decide to do something, you envision only the default case, then the interest is only mentally linked to the default, not the situation where "something else comes up".
However, if you explicitly contemplate all the things that might come up, and decide what you'll do in each case, then you are mentally linking your "interest" to those contexts, along with a preferred behavior... thus reducing the willpower load required to make those decisions when the time comes, and giving that "interest" a larger say in...
I have been using this exact method for a few years. It is absolutely the most reliable method for getting something specific and critical done in an intermediate time frame (say 2 weeks to 3 months), but it's kind of the nuclear option of willpower and should be used sparingly since 1) it relies on being the nuclear option, if you ever fail then you would lose faith in the method 2) it absolutely sucks, since it's usually something sucky you decide to do and you have bargained away the usual weaseling out tactics 3) Cthulhu doesn't like it when you break your promises.
it absolutely sucks, since it's usually something sucky you decide to do and you have bargained away the usual weaseling out tactics
That's a really good point. Robin likes to talk about this. Someone may enjoy eating fatty foods more than they would enjoy being fit and healthy. But people who express a desire to be fit and healthy get more social prestige, so the optimum case for them is to think they would be better off dieting, while continuing to eat as much as always. These people think they have akrasia, but don't. If someone gives them a way to "cure" their "akrasia", they'll just end out unhappy.
I got the impression that Robin thinks this explains most or all akrasia; I wouldn't go that far, but I think it explains some.
I've been inspired by Yvain and ZM, so I wrote up my resolution, printed it, signed it, and taped it to the wall in front of my desk so I see it when I look up. All with a bit of ceremony of course. My full resolution is below. ZM inadvertantly provided some of the language. Feel free to copy and/or modify for your own resolution.
Also, the short time frame is due to my summer arrangements. On June 29, I fly to California to begin a 6 week internship. After I get a feel for how much time I can realistically apply to studying while there, I'll write up a new resolution that takes those particular circumstances into account.
...I, Matthew Simpson, realize that I am not a monkey brain, but am a timeless abstract optimization process to which this ape is but a horribly disfigured approximation. As such, I take it upon myself to improve this approximation.
First and foremost, I promise to continually remind myself that every minute and every dime is precious, and every minute and every dime that I don't spend doing the best thing I can possibly be doing is a mark of sin upon my soul. Thus I resolve to spend every minute and every dime I have maximizing my utility function. I reso
The original website is down. This is an archived version around the same time the article was published: https://web.archive.org/web/20090703042537/http://www.picoeconomics.com/breakdown.htm
Ainslie's answer is that he should set a hard-and-fast rule: "I will never drink alcoholism".
You probably meant to write "alcohol" here.
All data, even anecdotal, on how to beat akrasia is great, and this sounds like a method that might work well in many cases. If you wanted to raise your odds of succeeding even more you could probably make your oath in front of a group of friends or family members, or even include a rule about donating your money or time if you failed, preferably to a cause you hated for bonus motivation.
I'd like ...
This is a rather reductive approach to Ainslie. He's not writing a self-help book. The upshot of his view is not simply that people get distracted from long-term goals by short-term goals, but rather that the self emerges from the need to manage conflicts between a variety of internal goals. Fervid declarations like "I have but one Self, a timeless abstract optimization process to which this ape is but a horribly disfigured approximation" gets it exactly backwards. You don't have a Self, except as a hacked-together construct that helps your goals get along.
More discussion here and especially more in the links to bhyde's commentary.
I purchased AI: A Modern Approach by Norvig and Russell in march 2008, and by December I'd read a pathetic 80 pages due to work and general cant be botheredness. So I decided to choose a deadline that had some sort of symbolic significance. I would have to finish the book before the end of the 2008. Yes, that meant over 1000 pages of textbook material before the year was out.
I calculated it would take 40 pages a day; skimming was not allowed nor was moving ahead without a solid understanding of the material. I knew that the end of the book would be a cus...
I do solemnly swear by the great Wiki that from now until April 1st, I will finish every part of every homework assignment by the midnight before it is due, on pain of food deprivation until the work be complete.
Thanks Yvain, you have inspired me to commit to some important things for the next month. I have written them down.
I promise to write about my achievements here on LW on the 18th July.
My brain clearly has different procedures for dealing with vague responsibilities it can weasel out of, and serious responsibilities it can't, and the oath served to stick studying on the "serious" side of the line.
an interesting insight. I shall try this.
calling upon various fictional deities for whom I have great respect.
Just curious... can you clarify this statement? It sounds a lot like Chaos Magick to me, and that surprises me, coming from you (not necessarily in a bad way).
This reminds me of certain behaviours I have read about in, for example, books by Walter Scott, where he is writing about Covenanters. Their behaviour is very similar to setting an oath and never allowing it to be broken. They usually did not allow exceptions, not even ones which are included in the initial oath. Or only after the most careful analysis.
They also had a refinement where they could identify "falling off on the left", as straightforward failure and "fallingoff on the right" as, basically, over-doing it. Three hours study in...
The link to the original article is dead; is there a copy lying around somewhere?
Does hyperbolic discounting mean that the sunk-cost fallacy can actually be adaptive, by "locking in" earlier decisions?
I've used a similar approach in the past to get myself to do things. One addition to it I find useful l is to also include a reasonable penalty of sorts for failure. For example, I will study for my test for the next two hours, and if I fail or attempt to weasel out of it, I will eat X amount of spinach. This way, even if you assign yourself an unreasonable goal and fail, you still have to pay a price, so you'll a. Hopefully assign yourself more reasonable oaths in the future and b. The effect of breaking the oath is "lessened" since you are paying a price for failure.
Related to: Akrasia, Hyperbolic Discounting, and Picoeconomics, Fix It And Tell Us What You Did
A while back, ciphergoth posted an article on "picoeconomics", the theory that akrasia could be partially modeled as bargaining between present and future selves. I think the model is incomplete, because it doesn't explain how the analogy is instantiated in the real world, and I'd like to investigate that further sometime1 - but it's a good first-order approximation.
For those of you too lazy to read the article (come on! It has pictures of naked people! Well, one naked person. Suspended from a graph of a hyperbolic curve) Ainslie argues that "intertemporal bargaining" is one way to overcome preference reversal. For example, an alcoholic has two conflicting preferences: right now, he would rather drink than not drink, but next year he would rather be the sort of person who never drinks than remain an alcoholic. But because his brain uses hyperbolic discounting, a process that pays more attention to his current utility than his future utility, he's going to hit the whiskey.
This sticks him in a sorites paradox. Honestly, it's not going to make much of a difference if he has one more drink, so why not hit the whiskey? Ainslie's answer is that he should set a hard-and-fast rule: "I will never drink alcohol". Following this rule will cure his alcoholism and help him achieve his dreams. He now has a very high preference for following the rule; a preference hopefully stronger than his current preference for whiskey.
Ainslie's other point is that this rule needs to really be hard-and-fast. If his rule is "I will drink less whiskey", then that leaves it open for him to say "Well, I'll drink some whiskey now, and none later; that counts as 'less'", and then the whole problem comes back just as bad as before. Likewise, if he says "It's my birthday, I'll let myself break the rule just this once," then soon he's likely to be saying "It's the Sunday before Cinco de Mayo, this calls for a celebration!" Ainslie has some much more formal and convincing ways of framing this, which is why you should read the article instead of just trusting this summary.
The stuff by Ainslie I read (I didn't spring for any of his dead-tree books) didn't offer any specific pointers for increasing your willpower2, but it's pretty easy to read between the lines and figure out what applied picoeconomics ought to look like. In the interest of testing a scientific theory, not to mention the ongoing effort to take control of my own life, I've been testing picoeconomic techniques for the last two months.
The essence of picoeconomics is formally binding yourself to a rule with as few loopholes as possible. So the technique I decided to test3 was to write out an oath detailing exactly what I wanted to do, list in nauseating detail all of the conditions under which I could or could not be released from this oath, and then bind myself to it, with the knowledge that if I succeeded I would have a great method of self-improvement and if I failed I would be dooming myself to a life of laziness forever (Ainslie's theories suggest that exaggeration is good in this case).
I chose a few areas of my life that I wanted to improve, of which the only one I want to mention in public is my poor study habits. I decided that I wanted to increase my current study load from practically never looking at a book after school got out, up to two hours a day.
I wrote down - yes, literally wrote down - an oath in which I swore to study for two hours a day. I detailed exactly the conditions that would count as "studying" - no watching TV with an open book placed in my lap, for example.
I also included several release valves. The theory behind this was that if I simply broke the oath outright, the oath would no longer be credible and would lose its power (again, see Ainslie's article), and there would be some point where I would be absolutely compelled to break the oath (for example, if a member of my family is in the emergency room, I refuse to read a book for an hour and a half before going to check up on them). I gave myself a whole bunch of cases in which I would be allowed to not study, guilt-free, and allowed myself five days a month when I could just take off studying for no reason (too tired, maybe). I also limited the original oath to a month, so that if it didn't work I could adjust it without completely destroying the effectiveness of the oath forever. Finally, I swore the oath in a ceremonial fashion, calling upon various fictional deities for whom I have great respect.
One month later, I find that I kept to the terms of the oath exactly, which is no small achievement for me since my previous resolutions to study more have ended in apathy and failure. On an introspection level, the need to study each day felt exactly like the need to complete a project with a deadline, or to show up for work when the boss was expecting you. My brain clearly has different procedures for dealing with vague responsibilities it can weasel out of, and serious responsibilities it can't, and the oath served to stick studying on the "serious" side of the line.
I am suitably cautious about other-optimizing and the typical mind fallacy, so I don't promise the same method will work for you. But I'd be interested to see if it did4. I'd be especially interested if everyone who tried it would post, right now, what they're trying so that in a month or so we can come back and see how many people kept their oath without having too much response bias.
Footnotes
1: I'm split on the value of picoeconomic theory. A lot of it seems either common-sense if taken as a vague model or metaphor, or obviously false if taken literally. But sometimes it's very good to have a formal model for common sense, and I'm optimistic about someone developing a more literal version of it that explains what's actually going on inside someone's head.
2: Ciphergoth, as far as you know does Ainslie ever start making practical suggestions based on his theory anywhere, or does he leave it entirely as an exercise for the reader?
3: I don't read a lot of stuff on productivity, so I might be reinventing the wheel here.
4: For people trying this, a few suggestions and caveats from my experience: