Years ago, I wanted to write more. I was already occasionally, but I had lots of thought that I wanted to get out of my head so that I could systematize and so I could get the feedback of others’s critique and get to higher levels of sophistication. I also wanted to become better writer.
I made log. It was a simple word document into which I entered everything that I wrote each week (I committed myself to writing something every week).
This was fairly effective. I got a hit of instant gratification every time I added something to my list and, over time, the log grew, and it was cool to look over all the the things I’ve written. Doing that was interesting because is showed what I was thinking about at various times and seeing how much I’ve already written is motivating (I guess because it reminds me that I’m the sort of person that writes?).
I’ve done somthing similar for the books I read. I keep a record of all the books I read in a year. It seems so silly, but just knowing that I get to list a book as finished motivates me to read more, even though of course, it’s the actual reading is so much more interesting and worthwhile then the adding a book to a word document.
I’ve started experimenting with a daily point score. I’ve played with the formula, but basically, I have a list of daily trainings and I get a point for each one that I hit on a given day, I have a list of secondary skills for which I get a point for every half hour of work, and I get point for each of set of thirty pages I read. I want to maximize my score (and it provides a mostly objective measure of my productivity for when I’m experimenting with new routines). I think even just keeping spreadsheet in which you record the number of minutes you spend each day working on what ever matters to you, would help you get where you want to be.
I don’t think this helps for accomplishing things that you just don’t like doing, but in my experience, simple record keeping like this works wonders for the things that you do acctully like, when you’ re doing them, and want to do more of from a global perspective, but that don’t have the attraction to “pull you in” in the moment.
I’m going to start keeping a list of… everything. It’s strange, but I have a pretty easy time just imagining the sense of reward that comes from having a long list of crossed-out entries.
Have you heard of habitrpg.com? It sounds a lot like what you’retrying to do with your point system. There’s already a LW related guild called the Bayesian Conspiracy.
I have one piece of advice: basic gamification.
Years ago, I wanted to write more. I was already occasionally, but I had lots of thought that I wanted to get out of my head so that I could systematize and so I could get the feedback of others’s critique and get to higher levels of sophistication. I also wanted to become better writer.
I made log. It was a simple word document into which I entered everything that I wrote each week (I committed myself to writing something every week).
This was fairly effective. I got a hit of instant gratification every time I added something to my list and, over time, the log grew, and it was cool to look over all the the things I’ve written. Doing that was interesting because is showed what I was thinking about at various times and seeing how much I’ve already written is motivating (I guess because it reminds me that I’m the sort of person that writes?).
I’ve done somthing similar for the books I read. I keep a record of all the books I read in a year. It seems so silly, but just knowing that I get to list a book as finished motivates me to read more, even though of course, it’s the actual reading is so much more interesting and worthwhile then the adding a book to a word document.
I’ve started experimenting with a daily point score. I’ve played with the formula, but basically, I have a list of daily trainings and I get a point for each one that I hit on a given day, I have a list of secondary skills for which I get a point for every half hour of work, and I get point for each of set of thirty pages I read. I want to maximize my score (and it provides a mostly objective measure of my productivity for when I’m experimenting with new routines). I think even just keeping spreadsheet in which you record the number of minutes you spend each day working on what ever matters to you, would help you get where you want to be.
I don’t think this helps for accomplishing things that you just don’t like doing, but in my experience, simple record keeping like this works wonders for the things that you do acctully like, when you’ re doing them, and want to do more of from a global perspective, but that don’t have the attraction to “pull you in” in the moment.
I’m going to start keeping a list of… everything. It’s strange, but I have a pretty easy time just imagining the sense of reward that comes from having a long list of crossed-out entries.
Have you heard of habitrpg.com? It sounds a lot like what you’retrying to do with your point system. There’s already a LW related guild called the Bayesian Conspiracy.