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.