Well, daily shortform posts do get significantly more boring while sick, unfortunately :(
I’ve scaled back a lot of my activities and plans so that I can rest and get over the flu more quickly.
However! I have successfully overcome giving in to the temptation to fully go into a cocoon and not do anything, i.e. I have avoided totally isolating myself which is a habit I’ve routinely fallen into while sick in the past. My plan of being extraordinarily more (virtually) social to prevent the onset of depression is really paying off! I spent the majority of active hours today engaged in virtual social activities despite feeling the strongest recent feelings of “wanting to dive into a cocoon and isolate” for most of the day. I will continue fighting those feelings, even if it feels like I’m being excessively social while doing so. I like people, talking with people, doing activities with others, etc. are good things that I enjoy.
A day after I feel the flu symptoms lessen significantly, I will begin lightly exercising once more and will adjust as needed until I’m back at normal health + good levels of exercise.
Tomorrow my goal is to incorporate more intellectually productive activities into my day in addition to the social ones, so, looks like tomorrow I’ll be doing my first weekly review + another thing or two.
Today is shortform daily writing #8.
I successfully completed December 22′s goal of not reading Hacker News until today at 14:30. I have a few open goals that I haven’t completed yet that I made in previous shortform entries, those will be reevaluated and reprioritized as necessary during tomorrow’s weekly review.
The writing I’m doing here in shortforms is nothing novel nor groundbreaking, nor all that interesting most of the time. That’s okay! I’m building myself a habit of daily public writing, and establishing that habit for myself is something I value immensely. I always have an eye towards quality, but if I prune my babble too much I’ll never write publicly, so that’s why these shortform posts are such a good first step for establishing such a habit: I don’t have to prune my babble much, but the general high-quality nature of posting on LessWrong still infects my shortform section, making these posts better here than they would have been on Facebook. Additionally, instead of not really ever having post ideas outside of what feels like random chance inspiration, after a few days of writing here regularly and reading others’ posts on the site each day, and cutting out doomscrolling and dopamine quick-fixes, I’m now generating a post idea or two a day or refining one I had thought of on a prior day. This is great!
A small note: upon returning to Hacker News today after almost a week’s break from it, I only stayed for a few seconds despite seeing some interesting looking posts on the frontpage. I suspect that going there from time to time when I’m in genuine need of a novelty binge might be fine, but even Hacker News seems to be just a higher quality version of a social media dopamine-fix generator site. Sadness :(
Well, daily shortform posts do get significantly more boring while sick, unfortunately :(
I’ve scaled back a lot of my activities and plans so that I can rest and get over the flu more quickly.
However! I have successfully overcome giving in to the temptation to fully go into a cocoon and not do anything, i.e. I have avoided totally isolating myself which is a habit I’ve routinely fallen into while sick in the past. My plan of being extraordinarily more (virtually) social to prevent the onset of depression is really paying off! I spent the majority of active hours today engaged in virtual social activities despite feeling the strongest recent feelings of “wanting to dive into a cocoon and isolate” for most of the day. I will continue fighting those feelings, even if it feels like I’m being excessively social while doing so. I like people, talking with people, doing activities with others, etc. are good things that I enjoy.
A day after I feel the flu symptoms lessen significantly, I will begin lightly exercising once more and will adjust as needed until I’m back at normal health + good levels of exercise.
Tomorrow my goal is to incorporate more intellectually productive activities into my day in addition to the social ones, so, looks like tomorrow I’ll be doing my first weekly review + another thing or two.
Today is shortform daily writing #8.
I successfully completed December 22′s goal of not reading Hacker News until today at 14:30. I have a few open goals that I haven’t completed yet that I made in previous shortform entries, those will be reevaluated and reprioritized as necessary during tomorrow’s weekly review.
The writing I’m doing here in shortforms is nothing novel nor groundbreaking, nor all that interesting most of the time. That’s okay! I’m building myself a habit of daily public writing, and establishing that habit for myself is something I value immensely. I always have an eye towards quality, but if I prune my babble too much I’ll never write publicly, so that’s why these shortform posts are such a good first step for establishing such a habit: I don’t have to prune my babble much, but the general high-quality nature of posting on LessWrong still infects my shortform section, making these posts better here than they would have been on Facebook. Additionally, instead of not really ever having post ideas outside of what feels like random chance inspiration, after a few days of writing here regularly and reading others’ posts on the site each day, and cutting out doomscrolling and dopamine quick-fixes, I’m now generating a post idea or two a day or refining one I had thought of on a prior day. This is great!
A small note: upon returning to Hacker News today after almost a week’s break from it, I only stayed for a few seconds despite seeing some interesting looking posts on the frontpage. I suspect that going there from time to time when I’m in genuine need of a novelty binge might be fine, but even Hacker News seems to be just a higher quality version of a social media dopamine-fix generator site. Sadness :(