On August 4th, I will be turning 15, and I’ve decided to initiate a very large project, which for lack of a better name, I will dub “The Plan”.
I intend to spend the days leading up to my 15th Birthday by taking information from an enormous variety of sources on what life improvements can be made, what skills are most useful, and what areas should be studied, to reach the ultimate goal of gaining as much benefit possible, as quick as possible.
There’s tons of things to consider, even assuming I have a tireless work ethic and can implement this immediately. What types of utility increases are there? Which are more important? Should all time be devoted to the quickest increases in utility, or should energy be set aside for starting some long term goals early? Does it make more sense to improve yourself, so you can make more money? Or to make some money, and use it to improve yourself?
Obviously I’m not going to find a perfect answer, and attempting to plan out my whole life is doomed to fail, but I’d at least like to have a better idea of where to go from here. (Besides, I’ll still have learned a lots of useful information.)
So, I pose this question to the LessWrong Community:
If you were me, and turning 15, what would you recommend that I do over the next year, to give me the biggest utility bonus the fastest, both in skill and wealth?
Hopefully, even if it proves an impossible question, we’ll see some interesting discussion.
Once a month, set specific goals for that month. Make sure that it’s very easy to verify that you achieved the goal (“improve at programming” is not a good goal, “solve every practice problem in the first chapter of SICP” is a good goal. “solve every practice problem in the first chapter of SICP, or spend at least 2 hours thinking about each problem before giving up and looking up a solution” is even better).
After you’ve decided on your goals for a given month, don’t second-guess whether they’re actually the best thing you could be doing or whether you’re wasting your time—it’s only one month. If it turns out it wasn’t the best goal to try, just take note of it and use that knowledge to pick better goals next month. It’s more important that you actually follow through than that you follow the optimal path, and if you keep switching goals every week, you’re not gonna follow through.
Ah, so the confidence spiral approach? I’ve been getting that recommendation a lot lately, which is a good sign that it’s effective. Anki is another good point too, I’ve started using it for memorizing the LessWrong Sequences, and intend to use as a resource for school when that starts, or anything in general that I’d like to memorize.
I appreciate your input, I’ll see about trying SICP as well.
One of the things I most often wish I’d done when I was 15 is study programming. I didn’t do that, though, because I hadn’t known that programming would be my main breadwinning skill. (I wouldn’t have done it even if I had known it would be an important skill for me because I hadn’t known that I should ask what my future self would want and be strategic, but you’re probably well ahead of 15 year old me in that respect if you’re here posting this.) So I think one of your first priorities should be to find out what goals to work toward.
What purposes do you instrumentally value wealth and skill for? It matters mainly because that indicates whether they’re time-sensitive, how much risk you should accept, and whether the marginal value of more money tapers off once you have “enough” or not. Also think about what other forms of power you might want—would becoming a famous person be useful to you? (It’s good that you’re focusing on becoming powerful first—that’s usually worthwhile even if you aren’t quite sure what you want.)
I guess one thing you could do is research what methods you could use to become wealthy, and then what skills you would need and how you would be spending your time if you followed each of those paths. Look at which options you would enjoy or at least tolerate, and would earn enough money at (“enough” might be “as much as possible”, depending on what you want money for), and start learning the skills you would need to pursue those. Prefer skills that are useful for many paths, so you’ll be more likely to benefit from them even if you change your mind later.
Social skills and rationality are probably also good things to learn young. You can start using them right away, and you’re not likely to be taught them later. (If you learn programming and then major in computer science, you’ll probably waste some time being taught programming that you already know. I had to do that for HTML/CSS, and it was pretty unpleasant. I’m still glad that I’d learned it early, but not sitting bored in class for four hours a week is preferable when all else is equal.)
For social skills, it might be worth getting a tutor, especially if you’re not above the water line. One of the things that I most appreciate having done early is seeing a speech therapist who also helped me with understanding others’ nonverbal signals. (I started that during elementary school, though—it may be harder to learn at 15.) That’s probably expensive if you can’t have it done through your school or have health insurance pay for it, though. The other way to improve social skills is to spend a lot of time around other people, so that you have to practice a lot.
If you learn programming and then major in computer science, you’ll probably waste some time being taught programming that you already know.
At many universities this is not a big deal, because A) they may offer credit by exam for some courses, and B) it usually doesn’t inherently affect your grade if you don’t show up to class, or work on other projects during class. So if you already know the material for a course, the main cost is probably paying tuition to certify your knowledge. Source: These things are true at my university.
Thanks for weighing in. I guess it depends on the school—I actually didn’t think to ask about testing out of the course, but my university usually does take attendance in freshman courses, so I couldn’t have gotten out of it that way.
You’ll want to target anything that compounds over time.
Something I believe you should add to the list is to develop the habit of exercise. You will live longer, have more energy day-to-day, and being attractive is one of life’s great cheat codes. The reddit fitness community has a great faq on how to get started.
Excellent point, I’ll definitely want to incorporate compounding actions immediately, and as far as exercise goes, I make it a point to do it every day I can, which is most days.
The reason I started was simply because I didn’t want to be out of shape, but then I read spark, which makes the case that exercise not only improves the brain, but also increases happiness and productivity.
I’m assuming you came across the same information, one way or another. Thanks for the input.
Once you’ve picked some goals, use this technique to improve your chance of achieving them (taken from “59 Seconds”):
Other researchers have developed “super-strength” visualization tools that aim to combine the motivational effects of imagining yourself doing well with the practical benefits associated with thinking about whatever is required to achieve your aim. Much of this research has been conducted by Gabriele Oettingen at the University of Pennsylvania and involves a little bit of Orwellian doublethink.
In 1984, George Orwell introduced the concept of “doublethink,” describing it as simultaneously holding two opposing beliefs in your mind and yet accepting both. In Orwell’s novel, this technique was used by a totalitarian government to continuously rewrite history and thus control the populace. However, recent research has shown that the same type of idea can be used in a more productive way, helping people to achieve their goals and ambitions. Oettingen speculated that one of the most effective states of mind involves people being optimistic about achieving their goal but also realistic about some of the problems that they may encounter. To investigate, she developed a novel procedure that encouraged people to hold both types of thought in mind, and she then carried out a series of studies to assess its effectiveness.
The procedure is simple. People are asked to think about something they want to achieve, such as losing weight, learning a new skill, or changing their drinking habits. Next, they are told to spend a few moments fantasizing about reaching the goal and to note the top two benefits that would flow from such an achievement. After this, they are asked to spend another few moments reflecting on the kinds of barriers and problems that they are likely to encounter if they attempt to fulfill their ambition, and again, make a note of the top two issues. Now comes the doublethink. People are asked to reflect on their first benefit, elaborating on how it would make their life more enjoyable. Immediately afterward, they are asked to think about the biggest hurdle to such success, focusing on what they would do if they encountered the difficulty. Then they repeat the same process for the second positive aspect of achieving their aim and the second potential problem.
In several experiments, Oettingen discovered that this procedure provides the best of both worlds. When people focused on an existing relationship that they wanted to improve, those engaging in doublethink were more successful than those who just fantasized or focused on the negatives. Returning to the theme of romance, she applied the doublethink procedure to students harboring a secret crush. Those who employed the fantasy-reality technique were more successful than those who merely dreamed about their perfect date or dwelled solely on the difficulties of revealing their true feelings. Additional work has used the doublethink procedure to encourage employees to become more involved in training courses; nurses to build better relationships with patients’ family members and show greater commitment to best practice; and middle managers to make better decisions, delegate more effectively, and improve their time-management skills.
Keep records, so that you can later evaluate what you achieved (and write about it on LW).
What format of records? Well, if you know what you are going to do, the best would be just writing numbers (for example if your goal is to make money, then how much money you made when), because that’s no-nonsense, and you can do monthly statistics and reports. But you are probably going to try many new things, so you don’t know yet which variables will seem important. Something like bullet-point diary could be a good compromise. For each day write very short messages, with some numbers if possible. For example: “Read a book XY, pages 150 to 190.” “Met a friend Z; discussed business plans.” These data can later be processed to graphs.
Once in a week or in a month try writing predictions about what will you achieve during the week or month. At the end make notes what you did and what you didn’t do. Also, why is the outcome different from prediction: was there some unexpected situation, did you change your mind, were you just too optimistic, or did your plan lack something?
Should all time be devoted to the quickest increases in utility, or should energy be set aside for starting some long term goals early? Does it make more sense to improve yourself, so you can make more money? Or to make some money, and use it to improve yourself?
This is complicated, and it depends on your specific situation: what skills do you have, how is your family financially, what are your hobbies? Some things require preparation before they pay off. Learning the first lesson of a foreign language or the first lesson of programming does not bring any benefits, so if you focus on short-term maximizing, you will never learn anything like this. On the other hand, long-term plans have less feedback, so you are more likely to delude yourself. For example, you could spend a few months learning a foreign language, only to realize that you actually have no good plan where to use it.
When you are a beginner, getting more skills is better than getting more money, because you will probably not make a lot of money anyway; but until you try using your skills in real-life situations, you may have a bad idea about how good you are, or which parts are important to master. If your parents are okay with paying all the expenses you need, you can ignore the money, but you should have some way to measure your progress. For example you could try to win a competition in what you learn. You should compete even if you don’t have a chance to win, because you will get the feedback, and if you try it again later, you will see how much did you actually improve.
what would you recommend that I do over the next year, to give me the biggest utility bonus the fastest, both in skill and wealth?
Really depends on where you are now. If you were my clone, which obviously you are not, I would recommend programming and social skills. For programming, start with Python, and when you can write algorithms (participate in a competition to verify that), learn something that allow you writing mobile applications; that gives you useful skills and allows you to make money in your free time. For social skills, watch The Blueprint Decoded, learn dancing, go to places where you can meet interesting people and talk with them (for example LW meetups). Don’t procrastinate online.
I think this is actually enough work for one year; programming will take a lot of time. You also need some free time to meet with friends, read good books, and relax. (Seriously, relaxation is an important skill some people lack; actually it is a part of social skills. Also, try meditation.) Read the Sequences, but don’t read all the comments.
Records definitely sound like a good idea. I’ve found that I’m very poor at judging how much progress I’ve made one something, (usually underestimate), and having some solid information sounds like the perfect solution to this problem. In addition, it should let me decide the next course of action off of numbers, rather than vague feelings on the situation.
As for social skills, it’s already on my “High Priority” list of things to do. When researching things I try to collect information from a wide range of perspectives, and see what people agree on. Recently I’ve been looking into Con Artistry, the entire purpose of which is to make friends quickly and effectively, so you can exploit and subtly manipulate them. A very roundabout way of looking into psychology, but a lot of the things I’ve read on the topic match with demonstrated social experiments.
Programming has been recommended three times now, which marks it as something definitely worth looking into. Perhaps I can eventually get into one of those Prisoner’s Dilemma competitions, after a long time studying of course.
Thank you for your advice, I will take it into consideration.
On August 4th, I will be turning 15, and I’ve decided to initiate a very large project, which for lack of a better name, I will dub “The Plan”.
I intend to spend the days leading up to my 15th Birthday by taking information from an enormous variety of sources on what life improvements can be made, what skills are most useful, and what areas should be studied, to reach the ultimate goal of gaining as much benefit possible, as quick as possible.
There’s tons of things to consider, even assuming I have a tireless work ethic and can implement this immediately. What types of utility increases are there? Which are more important? Should all time be devoted to the quickest increases in utility, or should energy be set aside for starting some long term goals early? Does it make more sense to improve yourself, so you can make more money? Or to make some money, and use it to improve yourself?
Obviously I’m not going to find a perfect answer, and attempting to plan out my whole life is doomed to fail, but I’d at least like to have a better idea of where to go from here. (Besides, I’ll still have learned a lots of useful information.)
So, I pose this question to the LessWrong Community:
If you were me, and turning 15, what would you recommend that I do over the next year, to give me the biggest utility bonus the fastest, both in skill and wealth?
Hopefully, even if it proves an impossible question, we’ll see some interesting discussion.
Once a month, set specific goals for that month. Make sure that it’s very easy to verify that you achieved the goal (“improve at programming” is not a good goal, “solve every practice problem in the first chapter of SICP” is a good goal. “solve every practice problem in the first chapter of SICP, or spend at least 2 hours thinking about each problem before giving up and looking up a solution” is even better).
After you’ve decided on your goals for a given month, don’t second-guess whether they’re actually the best thing you could be doing or whether you’re wasting your time—it’s only one month. If it turns out it wasn’t the best goal to try, just take note of it and use that knowledge to pick better goals next month. It’s more important that you actually follow through than that you follow the optimal path, and if you keep switching goals every week, you’re not gonna follow through.
Also, start using either anki or mnemosyne.
Ah, so the confidence spiral approach? I’ve been getting that recommendation a lot lately, which is a good sign that it’s effective. Anki is another good point too, I’ve started using it for memorizing the LessWrong Sequences, and intend to use as a resource for school when that starts, or anything in general that I’d like to memorize.
I appreciate your input, I’ll see about trying SICP as well.
One of the things I most often wish I’d done when I was 15 is study programming. I didn’t do that, though, because I hadn’t known that programming would be my main breadwinning skill. (I wouldn’t have done it even if I had known it would be an important skill for me because I hadn’t known that I should ask what my future self would want and be strategic, but you’re probably well ahead of 15 year old me in that respect if you’re here posting this.) So I think one of your first priorities should be to find out what goals to work toward.
What purposes do you instrumentally value wealth and skill for? It matters mainly because that indicates whether they’re time-sensitive, how much risk you should accept, and whether the marginal value of more money tapers off once you have “enough” or not. Also think about what other forms of power you might want—would becoming a famous person be useful to you? (It’s good that you’re focusing on becoming powerful first—that’s usually worthwhile even if you aren’t quite sure what you want.)
I guess one thing you could do is research what methods you could use to become wealthy, and then what skills you would need and how you would be spending your time if you followed each of those paths. Look at which options you would enjoy or at least tolerate, and would earn enough money at (“enough” might be “as much as possible”, depending on what you want money for), and start learning the skills you would need to pursue those. Prefer skills that are useful for many paths, so you’ll be more likely to benefit from them even if you change your mind later.
Social skills and rationality are probably also good things to learn young. You can start using them right away, and you’re not likely to be taught them later. (If you learn programming and then major in computer science, you’ll probably waste some time being taught programming that you already know. I had to do that for HTML/CSS, and it was pretty unpleasant. I’m still glad that I’d learned it early, but not sitting bored in class for four hours a week is preferable when all else is equal.)
For social skills, it might be worth getting a tutor, especially if you’re not above the water line. One of the things that I most appreciate having done early is seeing a speech therapist who also helped me with understanding others’ nonverbal signals. (I started that during elementary school, though—it may be harder to learn at 15.) That’s probably expensive if you can’t have it done through your school or have health insurance pay for it, though. The other way to improve social skills is to spend a lot of time around other people, so that you have to practice a lot.
At many universities this is not a big deal, because A) they may offer credit by exam for some courses, and B) it usually doesn’t inherently affect your grade if you don’t show up to class, or work on other projects during class. So if you already know the material for a course, the main cost is probably paying tuition to certify your knowledge. Source: These things are true at my university.
Thanks for weighing in. I guess it depends on the school—I actually didn’t think to ask about testing out of the course, but my university usually does take attendance in freshman courses, so I couldn’t have gotten out of it that way.
You’ll want to target anything that compounds over time.
Something I believe you should add to the list is to develop the habit of exercise. You will live longer, have more energy day-to-day, and being attractive is one of life’s great cheat codes. The reddit fitness community has a great faq on how to get started.
Excellent point, I’ll definitely want to incorporate compounding actions immediately, and as far as exercise goes, I make it a point to do it every day I can, which is most days.
The reason I started was simply because I didn’t want to be out of shape, but then I read spark, which makes the case that exercise not only improves the brain, but also increases happiness and productivity.
I’m assuming you came across the same information, one way or another. Thanks for the input.
Once you’ve picked some goals, use this technique to improve your chance of achieving them (taken from “59 Seconds”):
Keep records, so that you can later evaluate what you achieved (and write about it on LW).
What format of records? Well, if you know what you are going to do, the best would be just writing numbers (for example if your goal is to make money, then how much money you made when), because that’s no-nonsense, and you can do monthly statistics and reports. But you are probably going to try many new things, so you don’t know yet which variables will seem important. Something like bullet-point diary could be a good compromise. For each day write very short messages, with some numbers if possible. For example: “Read a book XY, pages 150 to 190.” “Met a friend Z; discussed business plans.” These data can later be processed to graphs.
Once in a week or in a month try writing predictions about what will you achieve during the week or month. At the end make notes what you did and what you didn’t do. Also, why is the outcome different from prediction: was there some unexpected situation, did you change your mind, were you just too optimistic, or did your plan lack something?
This is complicated, and it depends on your specific situation: what skills do you have, how is your family financially, what are your hobbies? Some things require preparation before they pay off. Learning the first lesson of a foreign language or the first lesson of programming does not bring any benefits, so if you focus on short-term maximizing, you will never learn anything like this. On the other hand, long-term plans have less feedback, so you are more likely to delude yourself. For example, you could spend a few months learning a foreign language, only to realize that you actually have no good plan where to use it.
When you are a beginner, getting more skills is better than getting more money, because you will probably not make a lot of money anyway; but until you try using your skills in real-life situations, you may have a bad idea about how good you are, or which parts are important to master. If your parents are okay with paying all the expenses you need, you can ignore the money, but you should have some way to measure your progress. For example you could try to win a competition in what you learn. You should compete even if you don’t have a chance to win, because you will get the feedback, and if you try it again later, you will see how much did you actually improve.
Really depends on where you are now. If you were my clone, which obviously you are not, I would recommend programming and social skills. For programming, start with Python, and when you can write algorithms (participate in a competition to verify that), learn something that allow you writing mobile applications; that gives you useful skills and allows you to make money in your free time. For social skills, watch The Blueprint Decoded, learn dancing, go to places where you can meet interesting people and talk with them (for example LW meetups). Don’t procrastinate online.
I think this is actually enough work for one year; programming will take a lot of time. You also need some free time to meet with friends, read good books, and relax. (Seriously, relaxation is an important skill some people lack; actually it is a part of social skills. Also, try meditation.) Read the Sequences, but don’t read all the comments.
Records definitely sound like a good idea. I’ve found that I’m very poor at judging how much progress I’ve made one something, (usually underestimate), and having some solid information sounds like the perfect solution to this problem. In addition, it should let me decide the next course of action off of numbers, rather than vague feelings on the situation.
As for social skills, it’s already on my “High Priority” list of things to do. When researching things I try to collect information from a wide range of perspectives, and see what people agree on. Recently I’ve been looking into Con Artistry, the entire purpose of which is to make friends quickly and effectively, so you can exploit and subtly manipulate them. A very roundabout way of looking into psychology, but a lot of the things I’ve read on the topic match with demonstrated social experiments.
Programming has been recommended three times now, which marks it as something definitely worth looking into. Perhaps I can eventually get into one of those Prisoner’s Dilemma competitions, after a long time studying of course.
Thank you for your advice, I will take it into consideration.