I’ve been trying to apply John Perry’s Structured procrastination more purposefully. I’ve been taking on numerous projects that feel important but probably have negligible consequences if they are left undone.
As far as projects I’ve taken on (amidst having to send out grad school applications) I’ve been authoring a weekly op/ed column in my school paper with a friend. Our school is small enough for us to get away with just about anything with some intellectual merit; copyright issues, nootropics, the Ig nobel prizes, anything of interest that comes up. I use this as motivation to get some writing done every week. I’ve also have a “book” on the backburner (a vehicle for toying writing up various meta-analyses of speculative technologies, the ethical debate surrounding them and possible social implications surrounding their implementation and dissemination), something I can use to hash out thoughts and practice scholarly research. Maybe something will come of it, maybe not; as I said I’m trying to keep a critical mass of projects a la Perry, and I’m doing this because I follow the pattern that Perry is talking about; I only commit to a couple of highly important tasks and put them off by messing about doing nothing. Now I put them off by adding five pages to my “book” or writing a column or collaborating on some other project. I’ve also taken on tutoring a graduate comp sci student in theory of computation, picking up some new information/coming up with new explanations that might help the student is also something I can do while avoiding doing something else. I may also help with the layout for our undergraduate history journal.
So far I’ve actually found all of this to be helpful. I’ve been unusually productive over the past couple of months and I’ve broken out of a bit of a funk that had been building up due to a brief self-imposed isolation (and devotion to studying). I’ve actually found that the time I do spend studying now leads to more retention and progress (note that this may be in part due to my purposeful acceptance of spaced repetition; I previously had an inexplicable aversion to reading -even skimming- anything more than once or twice). All of this is to be taken with a grain of salt, however, as the novelty of structured procrastination hasn’t yet worn off and may be contributing to some level of akrasia busting.
As an additional note, I’ve lost 40 lbs and added considerable muscle mass in 5 months by getting regular exercise and cutting junk food/fast food out of my diet, and I plan to continue along with this by slowly altering my lifestyle. It isn’t exactly going paleo and sticking to a strict workout regimen, but I’m certainly making headway.
As far as educating myself, I’ve been reading a lot of material on neuroscience and cognitive science and on Bayesian networks and machine learning.
That’s it for now, though I may have left something out. Now to go do those few chores around the house I’ve been avoiding...
I’ve been trying to apply John Perry’s Structured procrastination more purposefully. I’ve been taking on numerous projects that feel important but probably have negligible consequences if they are left undone.
As far as projects I’ve taken on (amidst having to send out grad school applications) I’ve been authoring a weekly op/ed column in my school paper with a friend. Our school is small enough for us to get away with just about anything with some intellectual merit; copyright issues, nootropics, the Ig nobel prizes, anything of interest that comes up. I use this as motivation to get some writing done every week. I’ve also have a “book” on the backburner (a vehicle for toying writing up various meta-analyses of speculative technologies, the ethical debate surrounding them and possible social implications surrounding their implementation and dissemination), something I can use to hash out thoughts and practice scholarly research. Maybe something will come of it, maybe not; as I said I’m trying to keep a critical mass of projects a la Perry, and I’m doing this because I follow the pattern that Perry is talking about; I only commit to a couple of highly important tasks and put them off by messing about doing nothing. Now I put them off by adding five pages to my “book” or writing a column or collaborating on some other project. I’ve also taken on tutoring a graduate comp sci student in theory of computation, picking up some new information/coming up with new explanations that might help the student is also something I can do while avoiding doing something else. I may also help with the layout for our undergraduate history journal.
So far I’ve actually found all of this to be helpful. I’ve been unusually productive over the past couple of months and I’ve broken out of a bit of a funk that had been building up due to a brief self-imposed isolation (and devotion to studying). I’ve actually found that the time I do spend studying now leads to more retention and progress (note that this may be in part due to my purposeful acceptance of spaced repetition; I previously had an inexplicable aversion to reading -even skimming- anything more than once or twice). All of this is to be taken with a grain of salt, however, as the novelty of structured procrastination hasn’t yet worn off and may be contributing to some level of akrasia busting.
As an additional note, I’ve lost 40 lbs and added considerable muscle mass in 5 months by getting regular exercise and cutting junk food/fast food out of my diet, and I plan to continue along with this by slowly altering my lifestyle. It isn’t exactly going paleo and sticking to a strict workout regimen, but I’m certainly making headway.
As far as educating myself, I’ve been reading a lot of material on neuroscience and cognitive science and on Bayesian networks and machine learning.
That’s it for now, though I may have left something out. Now to go do those few chores around the house I’ve been avoiding...