Overcoming aversions / comfort zone expansion: what motives do I have for avoiding asking for advice? Does thinking about asking for advice make me feel bad? Do I view myself as someone who doesn’t ask for advice? What do I expect will happen if I ask for advice and, taking the outside view, how realistic are those expectations?
Evaluating advice: now that I’ve gotten some advice, how much should I trust it (taking the outside view again)? Is the sample I’ve chosen to ask for advice from biased? How independent is the advice that I get from multiple people? When I asked for advice, did I accidentally prime the person I was asking in a particular direction?
The workshop included a practical session on comfort zone expansion (we went to a mall and did mildly uncomfortable things involving strangers) which I found helpful, mostly because it helped me internalize social pressure in the direction of comfort zone expansion. At the workshop this was abbreviated as CoZE and there was a half-serious idea floating around of awarding “CoZE points” to people whenever they expanded their comfort zones, which is the main technique I used the last time I tried asking for advice. (The other technique I used was a social commitment mechanism, but explaining how that fit in would make the story too long.)
Several ideas and techniques from the CFAR workshop are relevant:
Value of information: how much better can I make decisions after getting this advice?
Cultivating curiosity: gee, I wonder what advice I’ll get?
Overcoming aversions / comfort zone expansion: what motives do I have for avoiding asking for advice? Does thinking about asking for advice make me feel bad? Do I view myself as someone who doesn’t ask for advice? What do I expect will happen if I ask for advice and, taking the outside view, how realistic are those expectations?
Evaluating advice: now that I’ve gotten some advice, how much should I trust it (taking the outside view again)? Is the sample I’ve chosen to ask for advice from biased? How independent is the advice that I get from multiple people? When I asked for advice, did I accidentally prime the person I was asking in a particular direction?
The workshop included a practical session on comfort zone expansion (we went to a mall and did mildly uncomfortable things involving strangers) which I found helpful, mostly because it helped me internalize social pressure in the direction of comfort zone expansion. At the workshop this was abbreviated as CoZE and there was a half-serious idea floating around of awarding “CoZE points” to people whenever they expanded their comfort zones, which is the main technique I used the last time I tried asking for advice. (The other technique I used was a social commitment mechanism, but explaining how that fit in would make the story too long.)