#eti runs weekly life experiments

[etirabys]

Fuck it. I’m going to let my sleep schedule drift for the next week (until Jan 23) and see if it’s an improvement. The plan is

- Sleep as long as I like, whenever I like

- Upon waking – try to go back to sleep if still sleepy – else, switch on sun simulator (and keep it on for the next 5 hours) + open blinds, take some caffeine, and start logging what I’m doing

- Really try to let go of the clock – no “need to get stuff done because it’s already 4pm and I haven’t done anything” or “done for the day since it’s 11pm”

- Rely more on Soylent when I’m hungry at times when no one’s doing delivery

[etirabys]

my new stratagem is to not allow myself on tumblr, discord, or facebook for the day until I do 1 code tutorial on something.

Rules, since if I don’t set them down my future self will lawyer every piece of vagueness into permission to log in:

This experiment starts Nov 30 and runs a week – Dec 7 is the first day I’m allowed to access social media without doing work.

The boundary of a day is midnight PST.

The tutorial should take me at least 30 minutes.

The postprocessing (moving highlights into Anki) counts as ‘the tutorial’. So does auxiliary googling to understand what the tutorial is talking about.

If the total amount of time spent on the tutorial takes more than 2h, I can consider myself to have unlocked social media for that day.

Accidentally getting on social media is fine, as long as I log out as soon as I remember I shouldn’t be on it. Reading my own blog doesn’t count, but checking notes on posts does.

Failure is knowingly being on social media for more than 30 consecutive seconds without having completed a code tutorial. If I’m on social media between 30 and 120 seconds, I can still save myself by quitting out and doing two code tutorials before logging on again.

If I fail N days, I have to pay M dollars to an effective altruist acquaintance who I know to have quite different ethical priorities from me, where M is the Nth element of the array [50, 80, 100, 120, 130, 140, 150].

Outcome: 5/7 days compliance. 1 of those 5 days I did a kind of bullshit tutorial. As I write this it’s been 2 days since experiment completion but I haven’t been able to bear parting with $80.

Subjective semi-meaningless ratings:

Willpower required: 7/10

Perceived benefit: 5/10

[etirabys]

Running another weekly experiment tied to social media use, largely because social media use is the major carrot I have.

I was going to do one where I gave myself social media access according to how many minutes I’d recorded (manually, with stopwatch) as productive compared to the previous day – none if less than 70%, all if more than 140%, reading but no posting if in between. I’ll save that for next week because I’ve felt defeated and stressed about productivity recently – I’ve made no progress on a simple React app despite being miserable every day about not working on it.

My goal is, instead, to read enjoyable fiction for three contiguous hours a day. Nonfiction allowed but only if I genuinely prefer it to the most desirable novel available. It doesn’t matter when, but my hope is that if I’m feeling productive I’ll schedule it for ~5PM so I can work until then and get on social media for the evening, and if I wake up and discover I’m exhausted and freaked out by unemployment I can start right away and be done by 4PM, and possibly be rejuvenated enough to have a better day than I otherwise would have.

Once I start the fiction timer, I cannot do anything else aside from going to the bathroom or getting food/water (which don’t count against the timer). No other internet allowed. Suspend the timer for really unavoidable stuff (use your judgment), like housemate coming to discuss some time sensitive house thing.

If I knowingly do something social media for more than 60s, add an hour to the day’s fiction window. 60s is long enough to do things like edit typos in yesterday’s posts that are so bad that it gives me anxiety to see them up, or other things that I found myself breaking rules for the last experiment.

I can also get on social media for recurring weekly friend hangouts, because I forgot about those last experiment and it really sucked to miss the morning ones because I didn’t have time to do a tutorial.

This experiment runs Dec 9 – Dec 15, inclusive.

Probable books:

Book 1 of Wheel of Time (I know, I know...)

Deeplight

Teranesia

Reread ‘A Deadly Education’ because I read a lot of it on a tennis court a month ago and every time I play tennis I think about the plot and it’s tricked me into thinking the book was much more interesting than I’d otherwise find it

The Dragon Waiting

[etirabys]

// Attention conservation notice: describing an intended social media regimen. Boring to most people, but posting it on my blog increases likelihood I stick to it.

After thinking about different addictive subcomponents of tumblr, my current plan is a 10 day schedule where I can read my feed one and and post (queue) everything at once five days apart.

On posting days (next one is 10 days from now): Freedom to post during the entire day. Responding to asks and replies should happen today and no other day. Queueing is recommended but not required. I can check notes of posts from the last batch for reblogs and replies with interesting commentary, but not check notes of post I made on the current day.

On reading days (next one is 5 days from now): Freedom to read during the entire day, but recommended that I do it in one or two big gos rather than peppered throughout the day whenever I’m bored. Liking posts allowed, but not reblogging. I can check notes of my own posts when I run across them in my dash, but not go out of my way (i.e. by checking my blog) to get this same information.

Days are strict 24 hour windows starting and ending at the midnights bracketing the day, PST.

I can read or search my own blog (without checking notes) at any time. I have some leeway to log on and edit minor mistakes out of my posts, because they bug the hell out of me. I can add citations, but not new content.

I have no power to force my future self to follow any of this, and forgive myself in advance if I’m having a bad day and want the anesthetic of the online. But the default mechanism I’m setting up for handling rule breaking is:

If I came online to read my feed, take 0.5 hours off the next online day as posts I scrolled past. So, if I logged on and read 6 posts, I get a 21 hour window, ending at 9pm. If I use up all 24 hours by reading 48+ posts, just forfeit the next day. I can choose to switch the alternation order. (e.g. If I forfeited a writing day but was really looking forward to making some posts, the next allowed day can be a writing day, and the next a reading day, etc.)

Same punishment goes for checking on notes on posts on a day that is not an online day, or checking current-batch notes on a posting day, or checking non-dashboard notes on a reading day. 0.5h off the next window. If I am currently in a reading or posting day, shave that time off the current day. “Checking on notes” means seeing a list of notifications, not looking at the number.

If I came online to post a thing on a day that wasn’t a posting day, take N hours off the next online day, where N is drawn, in order, from: [3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 11]. So the first illegal post I make shaves my next window to end at 9pm, the second shaves it to 6pm, then 4pm, 2pm, 1pm, 12pm, 1am. The last jump is meant to disincentivize making six posts and then going “I never tumblr between 2am and 12pm anyway, might as well make 10 more posts”.

I’m trying very hard to design something that’ll shape my future self’s behavior when my future self includes a bored monkey who wants to smash all sorts of buttons, so this definitely feels like playing 4th dimensional chess with an opponent who needs to be coaxed into staying with the game.

Outcome: I was completely successful at abiding by the rules, and after a month or so started being so apathetic about tumblr that I’d go “yeah, I’ll make a silly one off post and then log out at 9pm, I don’t care if I don’t get those 3 hours”. Also I think I was unhappier because I wasn’t getting the tumblr nutrient, and my productivity wasn’t changing much.

Made up metrics:

Willpower required: 8/10 -> 2/10

Perceived benefit: 3/10