Habits
Itching
Scratching an itch hits all of the major requirements for a habit (as per The Power of Habit): you have a cue (itchy feeling), a habit (scratch the sucker), and a reward (temporary relief). Most importantly, you feel a strong craving when you get an itch - you desperately want to scratch and collect the promised feeling of relief, even though you’re making the situation worse (which is irrelevant to your habit-formation processes; see: gambling).
The Right Trigger
Key question: How did it begin?
What was the cue that triggered this whole action (of binge-eating or web-surfing or sleeping)? That seems to give you terrific leverage. If you can just change that cue, you can change everything that follows.
For example, if you felt very hungry, you might decide to go out and order some junk food. Your intense hunger was your cue for junk food. So, now, you can change what you do on that cue. Maybe eat something you’ve kept ready in the fridge for this moment.
If this works, you don’t have to exert inhuman amounts of willpower to prevent yourself from super-sizing everything when you’re already at the fast food outlet. They’re not going to let you get away - with their aromas and friendly noise and exciting menus. Instead, apply pressure at a point where you have some power - at the source of the waterfall.
Do whatever it takes to shift your mind out of the dangerous cue state. If you’re feeling hungry, munch an apple or whatever to sidle out of “very hungry” (which will trigger “eat tons of junk food”) to “slightly hungry” (which will only demand normal home-cooked food).
So, my prediction is that such a small intervention, if successful, will avert the whole binge session. Let’s test it out.
Cravings for Good
Use your cravings for motivation. Reward yourself with junk food when you do some arduous task (like batch-cooking healthy food). This way you should look forward to (or at least not avoid) these chores.
Under Siege… from Junk Food!
Your time and your diet are under attack from powerful memes. Junk food wants to take over your diet as much as possible (Domino’s, chaat items, chips). And junk content wants to take over your time and attention (Youtube, blogs, reddit).
Corollary of acceleration of addictiveness: Lots more addiction these days.
It’s not you, it’s the system. The reason why our whole generation is addicted to smartphones or FB or Youtube videos is because these things are way more tempting than anything before, not because we have had a collective failure of character.
Don’t blame yourself too much. It’s not like people in past generations had greater willpower and were easily able to stay not-fat. The foods simply weren’t that cheap or tempting back then (I think). Similarly, it wasn’t like they could just make themselves sit and focus on something for long periods on demand. They just didn’t have TV, blog posts, music, messaging, or videos. All they could do was read books or talk to people. In other words, they had far fewer and far less insistent temptations.
In the face of such powerful memes and such risk of being waylaid (by content or by food), you need to plan ahead. “Planning is a necessary evil. It is a response to risk: the more dangerous an undertaking, the more important it is to plan ahead.” (PG)
Don’t start a day without a plan - for your time or your diet. Change your plan if something better comes along, but don’t fall into bad ways simply by failing to plan. We need better defenses against such powerful memes. This is just a small start.
Endless Entertainment
Wean yourself off the format of an endless stream of content. Like with Youtube, where you keep clicking some awesome recommended video from the side bar. Or online blogs, where you have at least two more links for every new page you browse. You literally can’t stop.
I’ve had trouble falling asleep at night because the videos seemed so inviting. I wanted to check out just one more video… and before I knew it, the time was 3am.
Instead, go for formats with limited amounts of content. Like one episode of a TV show (though, here too, I’ve been guilty of binge-watching entire seasons) or just one chapter of a book.
So, mediums to avoid: Youtube with recommended videos on the side (maybe watch it in theater mode so that you don’t see those other exciting videos), online blogs (maybe open up a limited number of pages and then turn off the internet), cricket matches (these go on and on; something is always happening).
Weaning Yourself Off The Internet
Hypothesis: The way to get off the YouTube drug is by getting yourself on the Netflix drug. More generally, the way to get rid of an addiction is by getting yourself addicted on excited about something else.
It happened effortlessly for me with YouTube and Netflix. Once I started watching shows on Netflix, I had no interest at all in the comedy videos that had earlier gripped me for hours through the day. They paled next to the stronger drug of high-quality TV shows.
The obvious corollary is that you can get off addictive distractions by focussing on parts of your work that you find fascinating. For example, I started working on some Haskell problems from some online functional programming course and didn’t think about YouTube even once during the next five hours.
I think the way to “solve” the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you. Work on an ambitious project you really enjoy, and sail as close to the wind as you can, and you’ll leave the right things undone.
Habit Formation: Carrot and Stick
Hypothesis: The way to form a habit is to positively reinforce the desired action on the desired cue, and also negatively reinforce it when you do the opposite.
For example, I think Seinfeld’s method of The Chain works well because it satisfies both. It says that you must maintain a chain of one small action repeated every day for weeks and months, marked on your calendar to show the continuity. Doing the action (say writing 300 words or coming up with one new joke or going to the gym) will give you the satisfaction of seeing the chain grow each day and thus positively reinforce it, and importantly, not doing the action will cause guilt at breaking your hard-won chain and thus motivate you to do the action and get rid of the aversive feeling.
Noticing your Own Thoughts
Hypothesis: You can learn to notice certain thoughts when doing something by watching others do it. And of course, by reflecting on your own behaviour.
For example, watching someone use abstract concepts without a concrete example can help you develop a nose for it. This happened with some definitions in Causality.
How to Notice your Thoughts
Question: Can you get away with just a feedback mechanism over the task you’re doing, as opposed to having triggers on your thoughts themselves?
For example, I refrain from writing long functions because I look at the function and find it ugly (and also hard to reason about). I’ve gained that aesthetic sense for code by writing lots of code and reading some too. I don’t have to notice my thoughts, just the code I’m working on.
But, I’m aware of my posture right now because I told myself off about it just a couple of hours ago. Why did I know to pay attention to my posture, when I haven’t done that for months?
Experiment: Write Factorial in Elisp
Observation: I rejected the recursive function in favour of a Haskell-like list fold.
Observation: Also tested number-sequence beforehand to see if it worked as I expected.
Observation: Tried 3, and then edge-cases like 1, 0, -1.
Observation: I also used g L instead of manual line-spacing.
You focus on what will affect the Final Result
Hypothesis: You care about certain factors when doing something, and you notice whatever will damage those factors (and not anything else).
While writing factorial, I rejected the recursive version because it was “uncool”. Only after I tried to think of the reasons behind that did I think of how it would be inefficient unless there was tail-call optimization, and how it still repeated the if-nil-else condition that a fold encapsulated. Anyway, when I was writing the function, I felt that it was “uncool”. That’s all.
Hypothesis: Instead of measuring the distant effect of your current action on the result, you use shortcuts. Such as “recursive function => uncool” and “uncool => slow or repetitive code”.
Hypothesis: You’re looking out only for things that are “uncool”, things that you think would hurt the final result.
Observation: Recursive functions are considered uncool by advanced functional programmers (but not by Lispers, in general). number-sequence is an unfamiliar function, and using an unfamiliar function without testing it is uncool (I feared off-by-one errors and edge-cases like 1-to-0). Testing all possible types of input, especially edge cases, is considered cool.
Observation: Regarding manual typing vs using a keybinding, I am on the lookout for lazy editing, because I care about being an efficient writer.
Observation: I don’t notice how dirty or unkempt my house is (except when I need to not look low-class to visitors).
Observation: Nor do I care much about the labels on my clothes (I don’t even know if there are any).
Observation: Now that I want to get fit, I have started looking in the mirror several times a day, frowning when I see some excess fat. As opposed to neglecting the mirror for the whole of last year like a vampire.
Corollary: Novices will find it hard to judge their code because they can’t see all the way to the end. They haven’t built the shortcuts yet.
Hypothesis: One way to build those shortcuts is to look at what experts do at that stage. If experts don’t usually start with recursive functions, avoid it. Another way is to learn from painful experience.
Goals orient your Attention
Question: What is the “final result” at any point of time?
Hypothesis: Your goals orient your attention towards specific details.
Then, can you not have more than a few goals at any time? Otherwise, you’d have to pay attention to a lot of stuff at the same time.
Hypothesis: You’ll call forth long-term goals only when you see something relevant.
For example, if I hear that Aam Chaska is available at a supermarket 20km from here, I’ll pay attention to the address details and rush out when I can. Wasn’t thinking about Aam Chaska before that.
Ditto for being able to walk on my feet. Not something I usually think about, but at the top of my mind when I was walking on crutches.
Hypothesis: Maybe this is what they call your “identity” - things you pay attention to.
The Technique should Matter
In short, you will pay attention only to those things that affect your current goals. So, for you to notice whether you’re spending five hours a day in deep work, you need to have “produce high-quality results” as your goal. That will probably happen in grad school, but not when you’re sitting on your ass watching YouTube videos all day.
Similarly, why should you notice whether you’re always doing some satisfying work or not? For you to care about that, you need to have as your goal doing lots of work really quickly. Otherwise, you might as well spend time watching YouTube.
Why care about doing things with unnecessary vigour like Rajnikanth or holding a strong posture? These things will matter only if you care about impressing others. Else, you can save your mental energy for your real goals.
Why evaluate your work regularly? Why write an AAR every night? Why reflect on each performance, looking to improve your coding or your writing or your social skills?
Why make 10 predictions every day?
Why indeed wake up at 6am every day?
Hypothesis: For you to pay attention to something, it must feel like it matters to your goals. So, you must care about the goal and then the goal must be served by the technique.
One way to feel like an action matters is to see it make a difference. For example, noticing that you got your assignments done quicker when you worked without the internet or seeing an effect on people when you walk erect.
Which, of course, calls for a feedback mechanism.
Corollary: Wow. None of my rationality techniques has had much of an effect on my goals. Or, even worse, I don’t care about rationality.
Question: How do you know if you neglected a technique because you didn’t think it mattered or because you didn’t care about the result?
Hypothesis H1: You care about the result, but you don’t think the technique matters. You will neglect the technique.
Hypothesis H2: You don’t care about the result and you don’t think the technique matters. You will neglect the technique.
Hypothesis H3: You don’t care about the result, but you think the technique matters. You will neglect the technique.
Hypothesis H4: You care about the result and you think the technique matters. You will pay attention to the technique.
We need to distinguish between H1 (don’t respect the technique) and H2 and H3 (don’t care about the result).
Question: Are you doing anything else to achieve the goal?
If not, you don’t care about it. (Note: You may still think the technique doesn’t matter.)
Goals Reinforce Techniques that Work
Question: How do you set yourself a goal so that you actually care about meeting it? (Huh. It seems to comes down to “wanting it really bad”.)
Somehow, you have to bind it into your identity. I suppose Daniel Coyle is the best guide to this. You need to connect your identity to that of a high-performing person or group and want to become like them.
Question: How do you get yourself to feel that a technique matters?
Hypothesis: Show it having an effect (through your feedback mechanism). Reinforce it, in other words.
For example, when it comes to deep work, count how many more ideas you had over a week when you worked deeply. Hang out with people so that you can see the effect of doing things with style (or holding frame; remember how good it felt when I asserted my opinion to the gym guy).
Hypothesis: Ah. Both goal and technique go hand in hand once you understand emotions and habits. Goals are those whose success or failure cause strong emotion in you. And techniques feel like they matter when they help you achieve a goal and thus make you feel good, which reinforces the technique.
Therefore, the only techniques that survived in your mind are those that you observed helping you meet a goal. The others died out because they never got reinforced - either because they didn’t work or because their result didn’t make you feel good.
Corollary: The goal, or rather your love for it, comes first.
It all fits with Daniel Coyle’s idea of ignition as an outpouring of enthusiasm that drives the engine of deliberate practice.
Corollary: Your feedback mechanism should be capable of causing emotions in you. Otherwise, it won’t help you reinforce the techniques that change it.
You’ve got to respect your feedback mechanism and tie your emotions into it.
How to Master a Technique?
If we pay attention only to techniques that seem to matter to a goal, how do we learn a technique?
Hypothesis: First, figure out the goal for which you want to master the technique (you do have one, right?). Then, take goal-relevant scenarios and show yourself that the technique works.
Note: I think sub-goals will do as well.
For example, futsal lets football players practice dodging opponents even though that’s not their final goal (which is scoring).
Corollary: Made-up scenarios won’t work.
For example, I wanted to practice thinking empirically. I thought of taking random labels and checking them empirically. But that didn’t excite me. What was I going to do after checking the empirical data for “true romantic love”? How would that help me achieve any of my current goals?
Corollary: You have to get practice scenarios related to your current goal.
This may be the piece I’ve been missing so far about deliberate practice. I kept thinking that I could build skill by practicing on scenarios divorced from practical meaning - just a constant stream of the appropriate type of input. Nope. I need to see the technique bearing fruit.
Question: What if you see the technique helping others? Won’t that do? Why does it need to be related to your particular goal?
For instance, I saw a month of hard lifting transform my friend’s body. That inspired me to finally hit the gym every day.
Hypothesis: What if you need to only see the technique help somehow, not necessarily in your current goal?
That is, seeing it help others will do. As will seeing it help you in your goal. However, how about seeing it help some random goal?
Hypothesis: Maybe it has to evoke some emotion.
Seeing my friend’s muscles sparked envy, which I suppose for the purposes of convincing my mind that some technique works. Watching Harry experiment with the magic pouch inspired awe, which made me want to learn to experiment with things myself.
Hypothesis: The technique has to show results in your chosen scenarios. Otherwise, you won’t feel like doing it again.
Corollary: Can’t use techniques that just sound good to have. You have to show yourself the empirical evidence.
Experiment: Read Map vs Territory sequence posts
Question: Haven’t I seen empiricism help anyone?
I saw Draco using it:
“Well, I don’t know if Miss Granger finished them all,” Draco said. He held up a cautioning finger. “In fact, we don’t know if she read any of them, or if she really borrowed them, I mean, all we’ve observed is that the library ledger says she checked them out -”
But it didn’t lead to any satisfying results. I guess that’s not enough to convince my mind of the technique’s power.
Test: Check if reading map vs territory posts convinces me of the power of empiricism.
Observation: Hmm… Not really. They didn’t have any solid instances where empiricism let you do things you couldn’t do earlier.
Test: Look at my own exemplars.
Chilli powder that I thought wasn’t there but was, techniques I thought I had used a lot but hadn’t, and problems that seemed hard to solve but weren’t.
Nothing mind-blowing. Empiricism doesn’t seem like a sexy technique. Compare it to entropy - I could clearly see it solving a problem I was stuck on before.
Seriously, if empiricism hasn’t accomplished anything marvellous or even decent, why should I practice it? Yes, checklists help. A lot. (For example, I forgot to carry my glasses with me last weekend because I didn’t consult my checklist.) But I don’t have any reason to practice empiricism beyond that.
Reinforcement and Feedback
Hypothesis: Growth rate (or a score) reinforces actions that matter. To be successful, you should probably remove other sources of reinforcement (like watching videos or eating junk food). That way, the only thing you feel like doing is growing stronger!
Hypothesis: How to keep going amid failures? Visible (humourous) effects give you urgent optimism. That is, you get reinforced for taking risks!
You actually want to try new, dangerous things. That’s the definition of optimism (and urgent to boot, because you want to take risks now)! If you didn’t reinforce risk-taking, you would hesitate to try new things. You’d be pessimistic.
Hypothesis: Maybe humour does much the same thing too. You reinforce risk-taking even when it fails.
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