Starting the challenge today, making this comment for accountability. I have 48 bugs in my spreadsheet, with rows for the date added and date solved. I know I'm eight months late to the party, but I'll post updates and take part in the challenges as I go. Thanks for putting together a great sequence!
I wonder if all of the CFAR techniques will have different names after you are done with them :) Looking forward to your second and third iteration.
Putting all of my TAPS on post it notes on my wall so I see them when I wake up. This should make a good trigger for keeping them in mind during the day. It also gives some potentially free utility over time in the form of "see that wall? All those notes are different habits I was able to cultivate".
One thing to be aware of is you probably need to make the reading of the notes intentional, as once they stop being new, you’ll stop noticing them.
meta-TAP: wake up and read post-its
I'm generally pretty wary of this sort of thing. When I've tried things like this in the past I generally end up ignoring what I've written over time, like TurnTrout says.
I'm posting here to hold myself publicly accountable for taking on this challenge (starting yesterday), when I generated 80 bugs (many of these are likely to be broken down into more smaller bugs, so I'm inclined to be satisfied despite not reaching the magic total of 100). In fact, posting this comment is the last bug I'm tackling today to complete today's Yoda Timer exercise to kick off my being a more active member of this community.
Many of my best resolve cycles boiled down to finding and ordering something on Amazon; thanks in large part to Andrew Critch leading by personal example this got trained into a TAP and now I do it more or less automatically. The most recent thing I ordered, after trying it at the last CFAR workshop, was a bunch of pedialyte.
Very simply, I don't brush my teeth as regularly as I ought: Therefore, I put a sticky note outside my bathroom door reminding me to do so.
What I enjoyed about this most was that often, solutions to one problem fed into partial solutions to others. Keeping my phone out of my hands directly on waking meant organizing all my small-item chargers next to the front door, which is the most convenient and correct place for them, anyway.
I've been finding Yoda timers helpful, but not because they show "look how much you can do in 5 minutes!" - many of my tasks had to do with cleaning things up around the house, and these tasks take at least an hour to actually accomplish.
There was some clutter in my kitchen from more than 2 years ago, including a container of Soylent powder, some syrups that I used to flavour plain Soylent, and bottles of vodka and rum. I only drink ready-to-drink Soylent (I had ordered the powder to try it out, but it's not as convenient as RTD Soylent), and there's now enough variety in the flavours of Soylent that I don't have any need for extra flavours; I also no longer drink alcohol, because the idea of putting poison into my body to relax just doesn't seem appealing to me these days.
Beyond all the unused items, the area was also just very dusty. I could have easily cleaned the area a long time ago, but it never really registered on my radar as a problem that needed to be fixed. Yesterday, walking through my house as part of the Bug Hunt, the messiness of the kitchen (as well as other parts of my house and car) stood out to me, so I made a note of it as a bug to potentially fix, and once I had chosen that bug for my Yoda timer, even though I knew it would take more than 5 minutes to thoroughly clean the area, the Yoda timer gave me just enough space to create a plan in my mind and rally the motivation to actually tackle this problem that has been there for a long time.
Some thing i did in harmertime
2 Dizzy when take the bus (especially in the evening) -Đi grab 7h30 sau lễ, always
1 Mask not cover enough bus smell, do not have enogh - Bỏ vô bọc latop, đi kiếm và giặt để 1 chỗ - not at home nơ - còn 2p30s
1 Put pen in the pocket for ideas - take another one in pocket coat
1 Workspace: maybe less thing in the table, because a lot make me stress
1 not have a schedule for family - Sau khi đi lễ gọi về cho cha/mẹ 2p (maximum timer 5 min- để cảm thấy giá trị, Cuối tuần 1 lần CN Sau lễ
1 not have a schedule for me - Sau khi tắm thì gần với mình 2p
Was procrastinating doing anything that asks for white vinegar for years because the lid is annoying to open. Took exactly 20 seconds on the yoda timer to realize that another brand of white vinegar with another kind of lid must exist.
Thanks for posting all of this :)
I totally agree that we need to more systematically practice rationality. What matters is how well we actually use these tools, not how well we could use them in perfect contexts when explicitly prompted to.
Most of the bugs were solved through rapid googling, which felt a little like cheating, but was probably the best method.
Results
- Realized the shelf on my desk was only used ~ once per month, and removed it, giving me more work space.
- Found trivially easy healthier breakfasts.
- Resolved to continually add gratitude notes to anki at least once a week. Method is to appreciate the item on the card, visualizing life without it to better feel the value.
- Learned about linters for technical writing like vale, and plan to incorporate. Found a book to skim later.
- Reread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4K5pJnKBGkqqTbyxx/to-listen-well-get-curious
and made notes on how I can approach conversations differently. In particular "if a solution to someone's problem looks obvious, assume it isn't and try to understand why."
"if a solution to someone's problem looks obvious, assume it isn't and try to understand why." This struck me pretty hard. I was wondering though, how effective this is. How much has it improved your listening skills and maybe even your empathy? I find that it could also be counterintuitive - how much has it made you overthink?
I guess it generalizes to: if there's an unsolved problem and the solution looks obvious, you're probably missing something.
I don't think it's caused me to overthink in that if something seems one dimensional it's probably being underthought.
There are learnable exceptions, like a friend might have a mental blindspot to a certain kind of solution, or you might consistently overthink certain situations.
To be honest, I'm still not a great listener because I haven't squashed the urge to think of advice before empathizing.
I hit some nice and easy challenges today - replacing my shoes that have holes in them, getting a new ice scraper that isn't broken in half, and setting some reminders to take out the trash before it overflows.
The most successful Yoda timer-like item I've hit recently was upgrading my work setup. I work at a small built-in desk in my apartment, too small to fit two monitors. I also use the desk both for work and for school/videogames. For a long time, I just dealt with working on a small single monitor and having to get under the desk to unplug my mouse and keyboard from my work laptop at the end of the day and plug them into my personal computer. A few weeks ago, I finally decided to see if there was a better way, and ended up purchasing an ultrawide monitor and a USB switch. Now I can have two large windows open on my screen, and I'm a single button press away from swapping inputs!
I had a strong urge to skip bugs when casually doing this exercise last month. The following thoughts came up:
Writing this out helped me figure out some potential antidotes for this round. Here's what I told myself:
Bugs fixed this time
Bugs worked on but not fixed
most successful were
1. I plan to take a sabattical next year. Wrote an impressive researcher in a field I'm interested about to hear about any research opportunities in the pipeline.
2. Formalised my morning-routine in a document to decrease time spent reading about other's meditation before I start my own. Reviewing notes from last session, finding a relevant passage in my book.
3. Set up a routine to stay in touch with a far-away friend. Asking kindly about thoughts on a subject, and about what I can help him with.
4. I'm often distracted in my long study sessions by a desire for food. Made a routine to ensure snacks are in my room, not in the dorm-kitchen, without them spoiling.
2. consisted of many sub-items, so I count it as 2 separate items ;-)
It seems this method is very useful for meaningful tasks with some negative affect that I've been putting off without any good reason. Thanks for this!
Did this today. Results:
1. set a reminder every evening to make a schedule for the next day (problem this was solving is that lack of schedule means I procrastinate somewhat endlessly on things)
2. cleaned up the many bags lying around my closet door. now it is much easier to approach and use my closet.
3. looked into what grocery delivery services exist, made an Instacart account, decided to do the free trial of their annual subscription, and preliminarily decided that if that goes well I intend to just go ahead and pay for the annual subscription. (for this to be fully solved I still need to go ahead and actually try ordering some stuff; that's a more-than-5-minutes task probably)
4. I do a few weights exercises every day and I'd noticed that as I get stronger some of the exercises are no longer hard enough. so I thought through the exercises I do and decided on which ones I'd increase the number of reps I do and by how much. this also let to me adding a new exercise to the routine upon realizing it would be a good idea.
5. my tea drawer had too much stuff in it and was hard to use. I thought I'd need to fix this by just getting rid of some tea I don't care about very much, but it turned out that just consolidating the tea into fewer boxes sufficiently solved this problem for me.
I said yesterday that none of my many bugs felt like difficulty 1 because if something is actually quickly solvable I would have probably fixed it by now. All of the above were listed as difficulty 2 (except #3 which was 4 or so), but clearly they were in fact things I could fix right now, they just felt vaguely aversive or did not quite reach the priority level at which I'd actually make an effort to fix them. (I guess 1, 3, and 4 are not actually fully solved as I'll need to follow through with these changes to see if they're actually effective. But they at least have a good chance of already being solved, and if not then they're on a path that will almost certainly lead to them being solved.)
I guess 5 minutes is longer than I thought.
I see this comment but not your other one – we're not holding comments for moderation. I'm guessing this was a random hiccup due to flaky internet (although possibly on our end).
This is basically Allen's "Getting things done" 2-min method, I think. Just doing very short tasks right away to clear away the (mental) clutter. I think it's a good idea to practice this, but I also think that the opposite is also good, i.e. ignoring the small things and focusing all time and energy on one big thing, first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, that way, you will do your thing, but ignoring small tasks will also lead to a dirty apartment, eating crap and not practicing the guitar... So I think, for me personally, every morning has to be one big thing, with Yoda timers sprinkled throughout the rest of the day.
Adding to Qiaochu's point, Yoda Timers scale to pretty much any difficulty. There's a vast generalization which really works for me of the form: "take any given thing, imagine (inside view) the shortest possible time span in which a human being could do it, and set a timer to do it in that time." You might say Hammertime is me setting myself a 30-day timer to solve instrumental rationality.
Resolve Cycles has a somewhat different flavor. One thing we emphasize in the CFAR class is that you'll be surprised at the kinds of things you can get done in 5 minutes; you can just try to e.g. solve a bug, even a pretty big-looking bug, with a concerted 5 minutes of effort. We tell a nice story about a participant whose bug was "I don't have a job" and who in fact successfully acquired a job in 5 minutes (he called a friend).
I'm on day two currently and I only have 33 bugs so not sure if I will be able to sustain the entire challenge with that many and I might have to do step one again but it felt in the really nice to go through the Google Sheet and make the rows which I completed green today.
I ordered a new clock on Amazon, cleared my desk, sent several emails, and cancelled some email subscriptions I no longer wanted. I also decided on specific later times to do a few things, but I will need to wait and see if I successfully do those things.
This is part 2 of 30 in the Hammertime Sequence. Click here for the intro.
No! Try not! Do, or do not. There is no try.
—Yoda
There's a copy of Barney Stinson in my head who pops up every so often to say: "Challenged Accepted!" When Eliezer wrote about the biggest mistakes in the Sequences, my inner Barney started bouncing off the walls. Hammertime is a sequence designed to correct the three top mistakes by:
This is going to be legen ... wait for it ... dary!
Look, you don't understand human nature. People wouldn't try for five minutes before giving up if the fate of humanity were at stake.
—Use the Try Harder, Luke
The Yoda Timer (CFAR calls it a Resolve Cycle) has three simple steps:
Before we begin, I want to call attention to two ways to make the most of Yoda Timers.
Pick something you're afraid of doing. Suppose I told you, "Try!" Try as hard as you can. What does that feel like?
Now suppose I told you, "Just do it!" Actually go and get it done. What does that feel like?
To me, trying feels like pushing hard against my own resistance. Doing feels like pushing hard against reality. The Yoda Timer is designed to teach (or remind) you to notice what pushing against reality feels like.
Bruce Lee was famous for his One Inch Punch, which had such explosive power because every muscle in his body aligned into the punch:
The one-inch punch is a skill which uses fa jin (translated as explosive power) to generate tremendous amounts of impact force at extremely close distances. This "burst" effect had been common in Neijia forms. When performing this one-inch punch the practitioner stands with his fist very close to the target (the distance depends on the skill of the practitioner, usually from 0–6 inches, or 0-15 centimetres). Multiple abdominal muscles contribute to the punching power while being imperceptible to the attacker. It is a common misconception that "one-inch punches" utilize a snapping of the wrist. The target in such demonstrations vary, sometimes it is a fellow practitioner holding a phone book on the chest, sometimes wooden boards can be broken.
When you're in doing mode instead of trying mode, the inner conflicts fall away and you can practice punching reality with your whole soul. Imagine how far you'll go if every move you make carries the entire weight of your being.
It's easy to get tunnel vision and freeze up with only 5 minutes to go. To get maximal effect out of Yoda Timers, however, you'll need to get more creative, not less. If you had to fix the bug in five minutes to save the world, what rules might you break?
To get you started, here are a few classic approaches: How much money will make the problem go away? What email or phone call could you make? What external reward, punishment, or commitment can you set up in five minutes that will guarantee the thing gets done? What alternative course of action would achieve the same desired effect?
If there's something you can do in five minutes to improve your life, as a fellow human being I grant you permission to do it.
Pick your 5 easiest bugs from yesterday's Bug List.
WARNING: There only one valid reason to skip a bug - if you're uncertain whether you actually want to fix it. Later on, we will practice techniques for resolving inner conflicts. Difficulty is not a valid excuse to skip.
For each one, set a Yoda timer for five minutes and do it. That's it. Just do it.
If it helps, imagine that Yoda is watching. Yoda doesn't care how hard you try.
Share your most successful Yoda Timer bug-fixes.
Here are seven things I did in the past couple days with Yoda Timers: