As others have said, I don’t think this is incompatible with Yudkowsky’s post. “Trying to try” seems to concern itself more with stopping at a token effort or plan-making, while Adams’ method seems to consist of committing to concrete steps toward a goal with the option of stopping short of completion—and, perhaps more importantly, to a regular pattern of doing so. Which strikes me as a moderately clever way of avoiding the common failure mode of conditioning on too-high standards of success.
I expect one approach or the other might end up being more salient depending on where the user’s particular hangups end up clustering. If an individual is prone to skip practice or cut it short when feeling run-down or dispirited, Adams’ method seems likely to knock out that particular trivial inconvenience. If another individual is prone to skip practice out of a feeling that they’ve already accomplished their goals, Adams’ method seems neutral or mildly counterproductive and another motivation technique would likely work better. Additionally, I think it’d work better for problems that require regular application of moderate effort than those that require intense, focused effort; Adams’ bar for “try” seems too low to satisfy the latter consistently. Ambiguous standards of sufficient effort also strike me as an obstacle.
Anecdotally, I’ve had some success with a similar approach when establishing a regular workout schedule, and I’ve failed with a similar approach when trying to make progress on a software project.
As others have said, I don’t think this is incompatible with Yudkowsky’s post. “Trying to try” seems to concern itself more with stopping at a token effort or plan-making, while Adams’ method seems to consist of committing to concrete steps toward a goal with the option of stopping short of completion—and, perhaps more importantly, to a regular pattern of doing so. Which strikes me as a moderately clever way of avoiding the common failure mode of conditioning on too-high standards of success.
I expect one approach or the other might end up being more salient depending on where the user’s particular hangups end up clustering. If an individual is prone to skip practice or cut it short when feeling run-down or dispirited, Adams’ method seems likely to knock out that particular trivial inconvenience. If another individual is prone to skip practice out of a feeling that they’ve already accomplished their goals, Adams’ method seems neutral or mildly counterproductive and another motivation technique would likely work better. Additionally, I think it’d work better for problems that require regular application of moderate effort than those that require intense, focused effort; Adams’ bar for “try” seems too low to satisfy the latter consistently. Ambiguous standards of sufficient effort also strike me as an obstacle.
Anecdotally, I’ve had some success with a similar approach when establishing a regular workout schedule, and I’ve failed with a similar approach when trying to make progress on a software project.