Dear past-self,
While I know there is no way you will ever read this, it seems important to send a message to you. A lot has happened in the last four months, and it is mostly due to your efforts. My friend, tsuyoku naritai has not let you down. Going to a rationality workshop was likely the most important thing you will ever do in your lifetime. While you will hem and haw about how difficult the logistics of it are, or how much it will cost, or what if you get lost in the airport, the fact is, these feelings are your mind rationalizing. These feelings are Winter's complacency attempting to hold you down with the intention of leaving you to be a weak little boy.
I wish I could teach you the things I have learned. Some of the important ones are:
- don't be afraid to ask for the things you want: While this is something you know, it's not something you've internalized. The answer to questions you don't ask is always going to be "no". If those questioned are your opponents, then it is their job to say "no"; it is not yours. Don't do their job for them. Don't make opposition stronger. However, if those questioned are not antagonists, then perhaps they might say "yes", and that sounds wonderful to me.
- keep your options open: Just because you reach a local maximum does not mean you should set up camp. It turns out that life is so vast that you will reach a new local maximum tomorrow. Instead, try to get a feeling for when you hit a peak which is significantly better than entropy. Settle here, but only until you find something objectively better.
- challenge everything: Improvement requires change, and change is unattainable without trying new things. Don't take other peoples' words for it - most other people are dumb.
That's probably enough for now. Some less-meta-level things you should pay attention to are cognitive systems. Attempt to automate everything in your life so you don't need to pay attention to it. If there is a hole in your strategy, design a system to fill that hole. In particular, use a system to Get Things Done. Use a system to remember things. Use a system to challenge yourself.
These are the strongest pieces of information I can give you. Stop being so careful, and live your damn life.
Sincerely, Sandy
Howdy, future-me:
Golly, I hope you're ridiculously smarter than I am. If not, I'm going to be pretty darn upset with you/me/whomever, and hopefully you will be too. With that being said, it's probably hard to give you good advice, but I'll try regardless.
Discipline is a virtue, and perhaps the most important skill you can train. With discipline you can increase your productivity, install new habits, and in general become more agenty. In this regard, I would describe discipline as a meta-meta-skill. It will improve your cognitive ability to improve meta-skills1, which in turn directly improve your life. This seems as big a win as I can imagine.
Things on which to practice your new-found discipline include:
- polyphasing: getting more time out of the day means getting more things done in life. This is a huge selective benefit.
- training meta-skills: having a workout plan is a good way to train, but following it is a much better way. Spend an hour every day actively working on meta-skills.
- goal factoring: present-me can think of no meta-task more important than goal factoring. The things I currently do are all stupid and suboptimal and I'm not even aware of it.
It occurs to me to make a dependency graph of meta^n^-skills to determine at which level I should be training.
That's all I've got for you, dog. Kick life's butt. Don't disappoint me.
Sincerely, Sandy
Footnotes
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It bears thinking about if there exist a skill which can recursively improve itself and lower-order skills simultaneously. If so, then this is the skill one should train, rather than discipline. ↩