Someday I might work this into a nicer top-level post, but for now, here’s the summary of the cognitive habits I try to maintain (and reasonably succeed at maintaining). Some of these are simple TAPs, some of them are more like mindsets.
Twice a day, asking “what is the most important thing I could be working on and why aren’t I on track to deal with it?”
you probably want a more specific question (“important thing” is too vague). Three example specific questions (but, don’t be a slave to any specific operationalization)
what is the most important uncertainty I could be reducing, and how can I reduce it fastest?
what’s the most important resource bottleneck I can gain, or contribute to the ecosystem, and would gain me that resource the fastest?
what’s the most important goal I’m backchaining from?
Have a mechanism to iterate on your habits that you use every day, and frequently update in response to new information
for me, this is daily prompts and weekly prompts, which are:
optimized for being the efficient metacognition I obviously want to do each day
include one skill that I want to level up in, that I can do in the morning as part of the meta-orienting (such as operationalizing predictions, or “think it faster”, or whatever specific thing I want to learn to attend to or execute better right now)
The five requirements each fortnight:
be backchaining
from the most important goals
be forward chaining
through tractable things that compound
ship something
to users every fortnight
be wholesome
(that is, do not minmax in a way that will predictably fail later)
spend 10% on meta (more if you’re Ray in particular but not during working hours. During working hours on workdays, meta should pay for itself within a week)
Correlates:
have a clear, written model of what you’re backchaining from
have a clear, written model of how you’re compounding
The general problem solving approach:
breadth first
identify cruxes
connect inner-sim to cruxes / predictions
follow your heart
see how your predictions went
Random ass skills
napping
managing working memory, innovating and applying on working memory tools
grieving
Generalizing
Skill I’m working on that hasn’t paid off yet but I think you should try anyway:
At least once a day or so, when you notice a mistake or surprise, spent a couple minutes asking “how could I have thought that faster” (and periodically do deeper dives)
each day/week, figure out what you’re confused or predictably going to tackle in a dumb way, and think in advance about how to be smart about it the first time
My Current Metacognitive Engine
Someday I might work this into a nicer top-level post, but for now, here’s the summary of the cognitive habits I try to maintain (and reasonably succeed at maintaining). Some of these are simple TAPs, some of them are more like mindsets.
Twice a day, asking “what is the most important thing I could be working on and why aren’t I on track to deal with it?”
you probably want a more specific question (“important thing” is too vague). Three example specific questions (but, don’t be a slave to any specific operationalization)
what is the most important uncertainty I could be reducing, and how can I reduce it fastest?
what’s the most important resource bottleneck I can gain, or contribute to the ecosystem, and would gain me that resource the fastest?
what’s the most important goal I’m backchaining from?
Have a mechanism to iterate on your habits that you use every day, and frequently update in response to new information
for me, this is daily prompts and weekly prompts, which are:
optimized for being the efficient metacognition I obviously want to do each day
include one skill that I want to level up in, that I can do in the morning as part of the meta-orienting (such as operationalizing predictions, or “think it faster”, or whatever specific thing I want to learn to attend to or execute better right now)
The five requirements each fortnight:
be backchaining
from the most important goals
be forward chaining
through tractable things that compound
ship something
to users every fortnight
be wholesome
(that is, do not minmax in a way that will predictably fail later)
spend 10% on meta (more if you’re Ray in particular but not during working hours. During working hours on workdays, meta should pay for itself within a week)
Correlates:
have a clear, written model of what you’re backchaining from
have a clear, written model of how you’re compounding
The general problem solving approach:
breadth first
identify cruxes
connect inner-sim to cruxes / predictions
follow your heart
see how your predictions went
Random ass skills
napping
managing working memory, innovating and applying on working memory tools
grieving
Generalizing
Skill I’m working on that hasn’t paid off yet but I think you should try anyway:
At least once a day or so, when you notice a mistake or surprise, spent a couple minutes asking “how could I have thought that faster” (and periodically do deeper dives)
each day/week, figure out what you’re confused or predictably going to tackle in a dumb way, and think in advance about how to be smart about it the first time
What do you mean by
Like what do you think about when you ask this question? Is this more about “most important today” or “most important in my life”?
“Right now”, which includes figuring out what different ways things can be the most important thing right now.