I will parenthetically emphasize that every single useful mental technique I have ever developed over the course of my entire life has been developed in the course of trying to accomplish some particular real task and none of it is the result of me sitting around and thinking, “Hm, however shall I Improve Myself today?” I should advise a mindset in which making tremendous progress on fixing yourself doesn’t merit much congratulation and only particular deeds actually accomplished are praised; and also that you always have some thing you’re trying to do in the course of any particular project of self-improvement—a target real-world accomplishment to which your self-improvements are a means, not definable in terms of any personality quality unless it is weight loss or words output on a writing project or something else visible and measurable.
This section is a little confusing to me, so I’m going to lay out my thoughts on the subject in order to help myself organise them and to see what other people think.
I do attempt to improve myself by thinking “what shall I do to Improve Myself today?” Or rather, I spent several days coming up with plans as to how to improve myself, and now every day I ask myself “what’s on the plan for how to Improve Myself today?” I’m also constantly revising the plan as I gain new information or think of new things. I’ll give two examples. I’m revising the plan right now so that the next time I have a full day of free time, I shall spend it learning to solve a Rubik’s Cube, because my brain considers “able-to-solve-Rubik’s-Cubes” as high-status, and so I suspect that doing so shall be helpful in building my own success spiral. I thought this because I noticed that I was beginning a depressive death spiral. Due to my failure to get into graduate schools with funding, if you’re curious (another part of the plan: admit embarrassing facts like that in order to eat away at the shame, so that my anger about them becomes cold, not hot, so that I can use it. [a third part of the plan: read Ender’s Game. I have started, and 10 year old me is screaming across the decades “HOW DID WE NOT READ THIS WHEN WE WERE ME”]). Heh, got kind of sidetracked there, let me get back on topic.
I have done at least one thing that I can think of that I actually did do by, on the day I did it, thinking “how shall I improve myself today?” It was to start exercising. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share the specific bits of rational thinking I did. “Hey bgaesop, what we did the last time we wanted to exercise, and therefore the first thing you thought of when you thought ‘how should I work out?’ didn’t seem to work so well. Furthermore, we’ve encountered credible evidence since then that that is a dumb way to work out. You have access to people who know how to exercise better than you do, through your fraternity. You should go ask them how to do so. We also know that we have a tendency to procrastinate and never start things that we can start at any time. Therefore, you should go ask your friends right now.” As a result, I am now on a regular exercise schedule, doing free weights when I have access to a spotter, machines when I don’t. I think that the key aspect of getting this to work was twofold: admitting that someone else knows more than me on the subject and I should ask them for help, which is an ability that does not come naturally to me and that I have been working on for quite a while, and second, going out and Getting Crap Done the moment I thought of it.
I think that, for me at least, putting a plan into motion as soon as you think of it, instead of procrastinating, is extremely helpful in terms of actually Getting Crap Done. Especially plans that have high initial willpower and shame etc costs compared to the costs of maintaining them. For example, it was much more embarrassing to go to the gym the first time, when I considered myself a scrawny nerd weakling walking into the jock’s den, not having any idea what to do. After the first time going with my friends I was unafraid to go alone. Now that I’ve gone enough that I can actually see results on my body (which took astoundingly little time, seriously, like two weeks) I look forward to going. In fact, I’m going to go as soon as I post this comment. I’ve been putting it off all day, so this is an effective way of forcing myself to do that. You’ll know I was lying if I comment on anything in the next 45 minutes or so :)
This combines well with the whole idea of having rationality be demonstrably awesome, because my body now looks better than it ever has in the past, including when I was expending more effort and time on a less intelligently put together workout program. By taking the extremely simple steps of “look at what people who know about this subject have to say, okay now find one of them to help you, okay now actually do what they said” worked wonders over my old method of “google until you find something fun and easy sounding that promises to work well.” Upon writing this out, however, I am noticing how much what I did resembles simply appealing to authority instead of trying to figure out the answer myself. I could have sworn there was a specific post about learning from other people as opposed to discovering things yourself, but I can’t find it at the moment—does anyone know what I’m thinking of? Regardless, since I certainly don’t know and can’t do everything, and I know that my inability to admit that (mainly to myself) has been one of my biggest impediments in life, I hope that everyone would agree that there’s no harm in trying to learn from others.
This section is a little confusing to me, so I’m going to lay out my thoughts on the subject in order to help myself organise them and to see what other people think.
I do attempt to improve myself by thinking “what shall I do to Improve Myself today?” Or rather, I spent several days coming up with plans as to how to improve myself, and now every day I ask myself “what’s on the plan for how to Improve Myself today?” I’m also constantly revising the plan as I gain new information or think of new things. I’ll give two examples. I’m revising the plan right now so that the next time I have a full day of free time, I shall spend it learning to solve a Rubik’s Cube, because my brain considers “able-to-solve-Rubik’s-Cubes” as high-status, and so I suspect that doing so shall be helpful in building my own success spiral. I thought this because I noticed that I was beginning a depressive death spiral. Due to my failure to get into graduate schools with funding, if you’re curious (another part of the plan: admit embarrassing facts like that in order to eat away at the shame, so that my anger about them becomes cold, not hot, so that I can use it. [a third part of the plan: read Ender’s Game. I have started, and 10 year old me is screaming across the decades “HOW DID WE NOT READ THIS WHEN WE WERE ME”]). Heh, got kind of sidetracked there, let me get back on topic.
I have done at least one thing that I can think of that I actually did do by, on the day I did it, thinking “how shall I improve myself today?” It was to start exercising. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share the specific bits of rational thinking I did. “Hey bgaesop, what we did the last time we wanted to exercise, and therefore the first thing you thought of when you thought ‘how should I work out?’ didn’t seem to work so well. Furthermore, we’ve encountered credible evidence since then that that is a dumb way to work out. You have access to people who know how to exercise better than you do, through your fraternity. You should go ask them how to do so. We also know that we have a tendency to procrastinate and never start things that we can start at any time. Therefore, you should go ask your friends right now.” As a result, I am now on a regular exercise schedule, doing free weights when I have access to a spotter, machines when I don’t. I think that the key aspect of getting this to work was twofold: admitting that someone else knows more than me on the subject and I should ask them for help, which is an ability that does not come naturally to me and that I have been working on for quite a while, and second, going out and Getting Crap Done the moment I thought of it.
I think that, for me at least, putting a plan into motion as soon as you think of it, instead of procrastinating, is extremely helpful in terms of actually Getting Crap Done. Especially plans that have high initial willpower and shame etc costs compared to the costs of maintaining them. For example, it was much more embarrassing to go to the gym the first time, when I considered myself a scrawny nerd weakling walking into the jock’s den, not having any idea what to do. After the first time going with my friends I was unafraid to go alone. Now that I’ve gone enough that I can actually see results on my body (which took astoundingly little time, seriously, like two weeks) I look forward to going. In fact, I’m going to go as soon as I post this comment. I’ve been putting it off all day, so this is an effective way of forcing myself to do that. You’ll know I was lying if I comment on anything in the next 45 minutes or so :)
This combines well with the whole idea of having rationality be demonstrably awesome, because my body now looks better than it ever has in the past, including when I was expending more effort and time on a less intelligently put together workout program. By taking the extremely simple steps of “look at what people who know about this subject have to say, okay now find one of them to help you, okay now actually do what they said” worked wonders over my old method of “google until you find something fun and easy sounding that promises to work well.” Upon writing this out, however, I am noticing how much what I did resembles simply appealing to authority instead of trying to figure out the answer myself. I could have sworn there was a specific post about learning from other people as opposed to discovering things yourself, but I can’t find it at the moment—does anyone know what I’m thinking of? Regardless, since I certainly don’t know and can’t do everything, and I know that my inability to admit that (mainly to myself) has been one of my biggest impediments in life, I hope that everyone would agree that there’s no harm in trying to learn from others.