I admittedly have not gone through the entire sequence. Major props, though, for sticking to a massive project and finally finishing it!
Any chance you'd be able to compile it in PDF format or other?
Most of these problems are solved by signing up for a class with other people on a fixed schedule. Promoting the idea of lone wolf self-improvement is pretty much sabotaging people, it's unfortunate that LW emphasized it and I think we should make a clean break. I'll expand that to a post.
Core knowledge: List of common human goals
Part 1: Exploration-Exploitation
Part 1a: The application of the secretary problem to real life dating
Part 1b: adding and removing complexity from models
Part 2: Bargaining Trade-offs to your brain.
Part 2a.1: A strategy against the call of the void.
Part 2a.2: The call of the void
Part 2b.1: Empirical time management
Part 2b.2: Memory and notepads
Part 3: The time that you have
Part 3a: A purpose finding exercise
Part 3b: Schelling points, trajectories and iteration cycles
Part 4: What does that look like in practice?
Part 4a: Lost purposes – Doing what’s easy or what’s important
Part 4b.1: In support of yak shaving
Part 4b.2: Yak shaving 2
Part 4c: Filter on the way in, Filter on the way out…
Part 4d.1: Scientific method
Part 4d.2: Quantified self
Part 5: Skin in the game
Part 6: Call to action
A note about the contents list; you can find the list in the main parts, the a,b,c parts are linked to from the main posts. If you understand them in the context they are mentioned you can probably skip them, but if you need the explanation, click through.
If you understand exploration and exploitation, you realise that sometimes you need to stop exploring and take advantage of what you know based on the value of the information that you have. At other times you will find your exploitations are giving you diminishing returns, you are stagnating and you need to dive into the currents again, take some risks. If you are accurately calibrated, you will know what to do, whether to sharpen the saw, educate yourself more or cut down the tree right now.
If you are not calibrated yet and you want to start, you might want to empirically assess your time. You might like to ask yourself in light of the information of your time use all on one page – Am I exploring and exploiting enough? Remembering you probably make the most measurable and ongoing returns in the Exploitation phase, however the exploration might be seem more fun (to find exciting and new knowledge), and the place where you grow, but are you sure that’s what you want to be doing in regard to the value return by exploiting?
Why were you not already exploring and exploiting in the right ratio? Brains are tricky things. You might need to bargain trade-offs to your own brain. You might be dealing with a System2!understanding of what you want to do and trying to carry out a System1!motivated_action. The best thing to do is to ask the internal disagreeing parts, “How could I resolve this disagreement in my head?”, “How will I resolve my indecision at this time?“, “How do I go about gathering evidence for better making this decision?”. This all starts with noticing. Noticing that disagreement, noticing the chance to resolve the stress in your head…
Sometimes we do things for bad, dumb, silly, irrational, frustrating, self-defeating, or irrelevant reasons. All you really have is the time you have. People take actions based on their desires and goals. That’s fine. You have 168 hours a week. As long as you are happy with how you spend it. If you are not content, that’s when you have the choice to do something else.
Look at all the things that you are doing or not doing that does not contribute to a specific goal (a process called the immunity to change). This fundamentally hits on a universal; Namely what you are doing with your time is everything you are choosing not to do with your time. There is an equal and opposite opportunity cost to each thing that you do. And that’s where we come to revealed preferences.
Revealed preferences are different to preferences, they are in fact distinctly different. I would argue that revealed preferences are much more real and the only real preference, because it’s made up of what actually happens, not just what you say you want to happen. It’s firmly grounded in reality. The reality of what you choose to do with your time (what you chose to do with your time yesterday).
On the one hand you can introspect, consider your existing revealed preferences and let that inform your future judgements and future actions. As a person who has always watched every season of your favourite TV show, you might decide to be the type of person for which TV shows matter more than <exercise|relationships|learning> or any number of things. Good! Make that decision with pride! What you cared about can be what you want to care about in the future, but it also might not be. That’s why you might want to take stock of what you are doing and align what you are doing with your desired goals. Change what you reveal with your ongoing actions so that they reflect who you want to be as a person.
Do you have skin in the game? Who do you want to be as a person? It’s a hard problem. You want to figure out your desired goals. I don’t know how exactly to do that but I have some ideas. You can look around you at how other people do it, you can consider common human goals. Without explaining why, “knowing what your goals are” is important, even if it takes a while to work that out.
If you know what your goals are you can compare your goals and the list of your empirical time use. Realise that everything that you do will take time. If these were your revealed preferences, what do you reveal that you care about? But wait, don’t stop there, consider your potential:
Potential To:
That’s what’s important right? Doing the work you value because it leads towards your goals (which are the things you care about). If you are not doing that, then maybe your revealed preferences are showing that you are not a very strategic human. There is a solution to that. Keeping yourself on track looks pretty easy when you think about it.
And If you find parts of your brain doing what they want at the detriment of other parts of your goals, you need to reason with them. This whole; define what you really care about and then head towards it, you should know that it needs doing ASAP, or you are already making bad trade offs with your time.
Consider this post a call to action as a chance to be the you that you really want to be! Get to it! With passion and joy!
Core knowledge: List of common human goals
Part 1: Exploration-Exploitation
Part 1a: The application of the secretary problem to real life dating
Part 1b: adding and removing complexity from models
Part 2: Bargaining Trade-offs to your brain.
Part 2a.1: A strategy against the call of the void.
Part 2a.2: The call of the void
Part 2b.1: Empirical time management
Part 2b.2: Memory and notepads
Part 3: The time that you have
Part 3a: A purpose finding exercise
Part 3b: Schelling points, trajectories and iteration cycles
Part 4: What does that look like in practice?
Part 4a: Lost purposes – Doing what’s easy or what’s important
Part 4b.1: In support of yak shaving
Part 4b.2: Yak shaving 2
Part 4c: Filter on the way in, Filter on the way out…
Part 4d.1: Scientific method
Part 4d.2: Quantified self
Part 5: Skin in the game
Part 6: Call to action
A note about the contents list; you can find the list in the main parts, the a,b,c parts are linked to from the main posts. If you understand them in the context they are mentioned you can probably skip them, but if you need the explanation, click through.
Meta: This took about 3 hours to write, and was held up by many distractions in my life.
I am not done. Not by any means. I feel like I left some unanswered questions along the way. Things like:
And many more. But I see other problems worth writing about first.