I will be soon, sorry for the delay in reply
Edit: Discussion here
Brendon_Wong
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Effective Rationality Training Online
Hehe, “the mechanism” was referring to the entire procrastination process, not one specific theory or cause. Could my communication be improved somehow, or is some confusion somewhat unavoidable?
The definition of procrastination in psychology is, “procrastination refers to the act of replacing more urgent actions with tasks less urgent, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time.” It appears like procrastination is motivated by bad feelings about urgent tasks or good feelings about less important tasks.
However, anchoring relates more to making judgements based off a value provided first. There is no emotion involved. Normally people do not think “it looks like the deadline is 2 weeks away, when should I do it?” Instead, they put it off because of an emotional reason, like they have an urge to play video games, or the task is painful to think about.
Since anchoring does not cause the feeling or urges that drive people to procrastinate, I don’t think it has an impact on doing tasks sooner or later.
Sorry, that comment did not come out correctly. My bad. What I meant is that you might not have the right reason that explains why moving deadlines closer reduces procrastination.
I don’t think anchoring is related to procrastination. Making the deadline closer may help procrastination, but it does not seem like anchoring is the mechanism by which it happens.
Do you think a wiki page would be more useful than an entire wiki website dedicated to this topic? I can think of hundreds of self improvement items to add, and that’s not including the associated resources to study/implement the suggestions. I can see the wiki page quickly becoming very, very long and difficult to navigate. Hundreds, or even thousands of paragraphs may be hard to organize.
It seems like there is significant interest, so I will work on launching the website immediately. A “first draft” should be ready today or tomorrow unless technical difficulties come up.
A question to everyone: What would work better, a wiki, or a wiki with social networking features? Or does it not matter?
Should I create a separate discussion on this topic?
I have my own website and I can set up a wiki/social network dedicated to self improvement/instrumental rationality. Is there significant community interest?
If there is significant interest, would a wiki with social networking features such as forums and chat be more useful, or should I just stick to a wiki?
Wiki options: DocuWiki, MediaWiki, PmWiki, and WikkaWiki
Social networking options (with wiki): BuddyPress on WordPress
I am open to other suggestions, but they may be harder or more expensive for me to set up. If anyone has experience setting up websites, their help would be greatly appreciated (if the website concept is deemed useful).
I have my own website and I can set up a wiki/social network dedicated to self improvement/instrumental rationality. Is there significant community interest?
I believe that you are confusing anchoring with temporal motivation theory. It’s not the suggested deadline that causes the procrastination itself, but rather the perceived utility of a given activity increases exponentially as the deadline nears.
If you want to avoid procrastination, this article, which is part of a larger series, can help.
Good luck!
Since I have a total of $23, I must get my parents to pay and allow me to go for a week, that will be the tricky part
I don’t believe they have age constraints, the issue is the monetary constraints :p
Thanks for your help!
At first, I think I will try explaining ideas out loud as I read to save time, then write ultrashort notes on main ideas for long term memory.
Thanks for everyone’s help!
IIRC notetaking is supposed to work less well than explaining something to others.
Perhaps note taking works less well for understanding, but explaining it out loud without recording it down or even writing my explanation will do very little for long term recall. What good will it do if I forget everything I read, after spending many hours reading it?
That’s an interesting idea. I suppose it might help with better understanding the concept, but it might not work for long term memorization. Should I write the explanations down?
Thanks, I just signed up. Do you think taking a full CFAR workshop would be a good next step after The Sequences? I’ll be done in about 4 days at current reading speed (no planning fallacy adjustments), so I should probably plan ahead now.
Thanks! Just curious, how come you chose that over simply taking short 10 second notes allowing me to memorize all the main ideas?
Welcome!
If you want to meet other high schoolers, this looks like a good place to start.
I’m a 15, a sophomore in high school
I love to read nonfiction books. I read books about topics I’m really interested in, and I use the internet to explore smaller interests
None that I know about
I am considering starting businesses or nonprofits, or working at Leverage Research once I fulfill their hiring criteria :)
I have to look into the Theil Fellowship more, it was suggested to me once before
Hello! I’m a 15 year old sophomore in high school, living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was introduced to rationality and Less Wrong while interning at Leverage Research, which was about a month ago.
I was given a free copy of Chapters 1-17 of HPMOR during my stay. I was hooked. I finished the whole series in two weeks and made up my mind to try and learn what it would be like being Harry.
I decided to learn rationality by reading and implementing The Sequences in my daily life. The only problem was, I discovered the length of the Eliezer’s posts from 2006-2010 was around around 10 Harry Potter books. I was told it would take months to read, and some people got lost along the way due to all the dependencies.
Luckily I am very interested in self improvement, so I decided that I should learn speed reading to avoid spending months dedicated solely to reading The Sequences. After several hours of training, I increased my reading speed (with high comprehension) five times, from around 150 words per minute to 700 words per minute. At that speed, it will take me 33.3 hours to read The Sequences.
It seems like most people advise reading The Sequences in chronological order in ebook form. Is using this ebook a good way to read The Sequences? Also, If I could spend 5 seconds to a minute after each blog post doing anything, what should I do? I was thinking of making some quick notes for myself to remember everything I read, perhaps with a spaced repetition system, or figuring out all the dependencies to smooth the way for future readers, perhaps leading to the easier creation of a training program...
Thanks for all your help, and I look forward to contributing to Less Wrong in the future!
Thanks, meaning to improve the world is closer to what I meant to say.