ryan wong

Using books to prime behavior

Good question. I used to read for the love of books and building a fictional world in my head. I do enjoy that from time to time now, but the nature of the value I derive from reading has shifted.

Using your analogy, it's just that instead of frequenting art museums like I had before, now I have expanded my interests to business presentations, hackathons. Both generally provide audiovisual material, but we go to each of them for very different reasons.

Replying toUsing books to prime behavior

Using books to prime behavior

Yes that does sound like a promising system for retaining useful techniques. Will try it out.

Using books to prime behavior

My purpose for reading has shifted from "I want to learn this" to "I want to use this to prime my behavior".

After years of consuming psychology, business management and generally "how-to" books(as opposed to "what" books), I've learnt that I will only have gotten something tangible out of the book if it changes my behavior. If some of my mental framework(with regards to eg social interaction, persevering in hard workouts or challenging problem sets etc) shifts and I'm acting in a different way than before.

This works especially for biographies. When reading about someone I emulate, I tend to step into his/her shoes and adopt his/her mental disposition for a trait... (read more)

Replying toThoughts as open tabs

That, sir, might just have saved me ~10 years of work. Let me try to understand this better.

I took all of the tools that had been effective for overcoming procrastination, put them into the array, and then went to interview people to find the parts of the array that I was missing:

Are the text in the Experimental Array image a template for inputing these tools/"putting the pieces in place"? Could you point me to the source where the Array was formulated so as to better understand specifically how to fill in the text with my particular internal vocabulary/idiosyncrasies?

NLP state change techniques and sports psychology techniques didn't take into account your

... (read more)

Replying toThoughts as open tabs

To go back to the metaphor of this post, forcing myself to close every tab that is not directly in use is one of the best productivity hack I learned.

I fully agree with this, and that is where my problem lies. I find it difficult to re-create the 'inspired' state of mind when I first conceived about the idea just by reading the notes I took down at that time. I have this nagging suspicion that I'm missing something important. The best solution I have for now is to work on those ideas to re-create as much context as I can through association, but that doesn't work as often as I'd like.

Replying toThoughts as open tabs

That looks like an extremely well-thought out model, and I'm curious as to how it can be adapted from person to person?

I have had experience working with NLP and sports psychology techniques to set goals and change states. These techniques involve mental shifts similar to the system listed above. While I had bursts of insight and behavioral changes at first, these changes were more often than not short-lived, and I find that introspective techniques tend to have diminishing benefits, because there are no 'tangible' results I can point to mark progress.

Of course, I did all of the above without external guidance or feedback, so it might very well be... (read more)

I work better at night. At around midnight, I'm more prone to entering a state of relaxed focus, my mind making more lateral connections when reading or coming up with ideas that will likely have great positive impact on my personal life and work.

This happens after a hard workout too, or after having a stimulating discussion with a trusted, unbiased, and driven friend.

The conflict comes every day I wake up in the morning, and it's as if the open tabs of useful thoughts in my mind have closed, refreshed, but with no Command+Shift+Tab to reopen them exactly the way they were. I feel different in the morning; without the vision and... (read 446 more words →)

Replying toPersonal experience of coffee as nootropic

Personal experience of coffee as nootropic

Yes, I've tried meditation but it doesn't lead to the marked increase in energy I'm looking for, just less emotional reactivity and a certain level of cognitive detachment that's useful in thinking within conversations. Both useful, but serves different purposes in my experience.

I've heard of Yerba mate but haven't actually tried it before. Curious to see how it compares to other teas, especially black/higher-caffeine ones.

Personal experience of coffee as nootropic

My life took a turn in 2015. That was when I first started drinking coffee on a regular basis. Not Americanos or Lattes, but 'Kopi' brewed with higher-caffeine Robusta beans using a 'sock' immersed in water close to boiling temperature, extracting massive amounts of caffeine along with strong bitter notes that are neutralized by sweet, sugary condensed milk.

My rate of learning in sports shot up seemingly overnight. My field of vision and attention increased tremendously. I gained more stamina and muscle control. It wasn't just a subjective feeling. The results showed in the speed and accuracy of the pitches I threw. The first training session I had with coffee was... (read 373 more words →)

ryan wong6yQuick Take

Something that has always puzzled me about high school, is why students are required to memorize very specific definitions of terms in the physical sciences. Why is such a high percentage of marks rewarded for being able to recite, word-for-word, that electric potential, refers, specifically, to the work done per unit charge by an external force in bringing a small positive charge from infinity to a point in a E-field without a change in kinetic energy? There are five italicized keywords/terms there which will result in an entire lost mark if missed out.

I hypothesize it's because scientists need to know what something refers to specifically, or there will be a clash in... (read more)

Ah, now I've got what you mean. Thanks for referring me to that thought experiment, I don't have much prior knowledge on the field of AI so that was definitely a new insight for me.

I see now that my original shortform did not explicitly state that my terminal value was indeed the fulfillment of important goals. I was reflecting more on the distinction between pleasurable feelings that led to distraction & bad habits, vs ones that led to the actual fulfillment of goals. It was a personal reminder to experience the latter in place of the former, as much as I can.

Now, I hold the view that pleasure can be a useful tool in the pursuit of my goals. It is a means to that end. An important caveat that your response reminded me of, though, is that sometimes pursuing goals might not be immediately pleasurable, so it might be wise not to naïvely expect pleasure from every part of that process.

As an add-on, I found this LW article today that captures the essence of "first pleasure"

clippy interjects from the balcony: like number of paperclips created!

I'm not quite sure I got this part, could you please elaborate on it?

why seek pleasure at all? Wouldn't it be better to measure success directly based on meeting long-term goals

Here, I would argue that the feeling of the second pleasure is essential to meeting long-term goals. Feeling good about accomplishing sub-tasks will keep someone working towards an important goal, especially if it requires a long period of sustained effort.

Thus, meeting short-term goal -> success -> second pleasure -> working on next short-term goal; with enough iterations, that will lead to the meeting of long-term goals and thus success.

ryan wong's Shortform