Effective Use of Time

Well... I've gotten a bit more sleep and then uncharacteristically decided to look at some more things on LessWrong.com - still not committing to the basic sequences, but returning to the site out of interest.

I wanted to come back and correct myself about my motivations, because it seemed to me after reading this, this, and this, that I was deceiving myself further than I had perceived. I'm still not sure I have a motivation proper beyond self-destructiveness, which has fueled a lot of my activity since childhood, and laziness, of which I can say the same.

In "Humans are not automatically strategic", an outline is given for genuinely making the best use of one's time to achieve a specific goal, and it goes like this.

• (a) Ask ourselves what we’re trying to achieve;
• (b) Ask ourselves how we could tell if we achieved it and how we can track progress;
• (c) Find ourselves strongly, intrinsically curious about information that would help us achieve our goal;
• (d) Gather that information (e.g., by asking as how folks commonly achieve our goal, or similar goals, or by tallying which strategies have and haven’t worked for us in the past);
• (e) Systematically test many different conjectures for how to achieve the goals, including methods that aren’t habitual for us, while tracking which ones do and don’t work;
• (f) Focus most of the energy that *isn’t* going into systematic exploration, on the methods that work best;
• (g) Make sure that our "goal" is really our goal, that we coherently want it and are not constrained by fears or by uncertainty as to whether it is worth the effort, and that we have thought through any questions and decisions in advance so they won't continually sap our energies;
• (h) Use environmental cues and social contexts to bolster our motivation, so we can keep working effectively in the face of intermittent frustrations, or temptations based in hyperbolic discounting;

The jist of the article was largely that these strategies exist and aren't really all that hard to come up with, but are very, very seldom used by anyone to actually achieve their goals.

I continually struggle with (g), which is probably a good sign that my first goal should be to find a doctor and associated counselor that I am able and willing to keep appointments with easily.

It says quite a lot that upon reading articles which presuppose that a rational person wants to maximize their effectiveness at attaining their goals I react with so much resistance and even offense I can almost feel it physically, like a feeling of resisting being pulled forward by the back of the skull. Why should I be offended by a completely logical presupposition? Because it challenges my ego, of course, and my right to call myself rational if there is nothing in particular I am putting all my effort into achieving. I feel I can understand better people who find my inactivity reproachable.

Recognition of my inability to act according to goals has spurred me into activity, though, and I'm investigating a venue or two of information according to (d) as well as getting around to some small things I'd been procrastinating on. On that subject, I have some dishes to do. Another time, bloggers.

Right... So...

Well, the first thing anyone should be able to see about this blog so far is that it has been a massive failure, and that I am incredibly lazy. This is a trend you are likely to see continue, because I have always been more or less incapable of self-imposed structure.

But! There is a reason I have returned, because I did in fact pop my head into LessWrong.com last night while nearly collapsing from fatigue (due to my own stubborn refusal to sleep until I have to, not because I had anything important to be doing) and found a couple of interesting things, one of which was a reiteration of the general wisdom that you don't get anywhere without actually taking a couple of steps... but not remotely in those words. "Quantity over quality" was the message of the post, the reasoning being that realistically, quantity of production and activity is the only way to achieve quality. That is, when you do something many, many times, you learn from your mistakes (if you're paying any attention, at least, and being rational about what you're doing) and hone your technique. There was a cute story about a pottery class that demonstrated this point neatly, too, though there's no citation, so it may be merely a mythical anecdote.

Here's the post, for those interested.

Some of the responses posted there are interesting to read, too, and raise interesting points, and I found myself investigating links as though trapped in TVtropes, because as bad as I am at committing to independently showing up and studying it, I am, really, I promise, interested in this stuff.

I found myself here, at a post about the moral void, and how it seems many people are so terrified of it, they will allow the concept of an external measure of morality to "turn off" their inner perception of it. Personally, I'm kind of proud that my initial reaction to the question "Would you kill babies if it was inherently the right thing to do? Yes or no?" was "In what circumstance could killing babies possibly be inherently the right thing to do? Are our theoretical babies all suffering from incurable and agonizing diseases, or being born to mothers whose bodies are incapable of surviving childbirth, or something?"... And my reaction after considering it for a moment, and especially after reading the rest of the post, was "No." Not, mind you, a "no" with 100% certainty. If somehow the imaginary stone tablet of the universe manifested itself to me without room for any doubt whatsoever and turned out to read that inflicting pain was morally right, it would give me something to pause and think very hard about, and probably very painfully. But I'm pretty sure that's impossible, so let's discount it for now. Oh, and by the way (in case you didn't visit the link), circumstantial morality like killing a fetus to be born to a mother whose body is unlikely to be able to survive childbirth is not what I'm talking about. I think, in this case, that would be the rational answer.

Next stop along the way was the Twelve Virtues of Rationality: Curiosity, Relinquishment, Lightness, Evenness, Argument, Empiricism, Simplicity, Humility, Perfectionism, Precision, Scholarship, and The Void - The void being the one whose name is least obviously indicative as to what exactly the virtue is, and that is precisely the point. This virtue is the as-yet unknown truth, that which makes any statement or observation true or untrue. It is referred to as the unnamed virtue, and several other things, and it essentially means "correctness", which is the highest goal of the rationalist, the other virtues all being ways of seeking it out effectively.

This page, though, led me to do some thinking about myself as a rationalist (without warning in a spontaneous conversation with one of my friends, because I tend to lose my train of thought and all its coherence if I'm not talking or typing to someone when I'm thinking something through - I was duly chastised for my rudeness and inconsideration), and come to the conclusion that as in many other parts of my life, my biggest problem is that either I have no motivation, I cannot properly identify or remember my motivation, or I don't accept my motivation as legitimate, and thus reject and suppress it, leading to the second explanation. These listed in increasing order of accuracy, decreasing order of self-deception. Why do I want to, why do I bother, to be rational? It doesn't guarantee financial success or security unless that's exactly what your motivation is, and it isn't mine. But it's not as hard to remember as I had expected it to be. What's my motivation? ... Well... Saving the world, of course, in little ways here and there. By teaching people. And yes, yes, I know I'm not doing that in the most effective way. I'm doing it in ways I can already, though, and trying to reach a higher level of mental health and self-acceptance. After all, I only have myself to do things with.

I guess I was inspired by the message of quantity over quality, and decided to stop procrastinating and actually post. I may have been actively suffering from paralyzing perfectionism without being actively aware of it in this case. Either way, I think it's a positive step going from never posting at all to posting once, several months after I told myself I was supposed to.

I'm not going to promise any kind of structure to the times I post here anymore. It was overambitious of me to do so. But maybe, just maybe, it'll at least be less than three or four months before I post again. I think so, but I may be exhibiting unrealistic optimism.