As a judoka, this really spoke to me and was a useful analogy—thankyou very much for it!
My own idea of what good mental posture looks like includes some idea of the way you model yourself. One of my biggest failure modes is when I slip into seeing myself as ‘random useless seventeen-year-old’ and therefore acting as I expect a random useless seventeen year old to act (ineffectively) or waiting to get permission before I do things. When I manage to change into seeing-myself-as-agent mode, my productivity and rationality gets supercharged compared to the aforementioned state. It has funny side effects—for instance, I notice I walk faster and tend to spin on my heels and clap my hands together when I’m being agenty, whereas I stroll and gesture vaguely when I’m being useless. I speak more precisely when I’m in agenty-mode, and replace ‘um/er/uh’ with silent pauses or ‘hmm’. This indicates to me that it’s not just a single mental action, but a whole different stance.
I think it’s similar to what is spoken about in HPMOR with most people just playing a role and doing what they think someone in that role should do, but others genuinely optimising—but I don’t think I’ve escaped the mode of playing a role, I just sometimes manage to play the role of an agenty person rather than the role of a useless person. It turns out that if you play the role of someone who optimises everything and Gets Stuff Done, you get stuff done. (Sometimes.)
This definitely feels like two very different mental postures. I’m not actually sure how I induce the agenty state from the ineffective state, but I have identified a number of things that might have to do with it, from social pressure, to bright lights, to having a solid idea of what agentyness looks like from observing good role models. The last idea (watching a role model and knowing what agentyness looks like) was reinforced in my mind when I heard a friend saying similar things recently, so to improve my mental posture I’m going to try and watch more awesome people work so I get an idea of what awesomeness looks like, and then try to play that role more and the ‘useless kid’ role less. I also really like your suggestions!
As a judoka, this really spoke to me and was a useful analogy—thankyou very much for it!
My own idea of what good mental posture looks like includes some idea of the way you model yourself. One of my biggest failure modes is when I slip into seeing myself as ‘random useless seventeen-year-old’ and therefore acting as I expect a random useless seventeen year old to act (ineffectively) or waiting to get permission before I do things. When I manage to change into seeing-myself-as-agent mode, my productivity and rationality gets supercharged compared to the aforementioned state. It has funny side effects—for instance, I notice I walk faster and tend to spin on my heels and clap my hands together when I’m being agenty, whereas I stroll and gesture vaguely when I’m being useless. I speak more precisely when I’m in agenty-mode, and replace ‘um/er/uh’ with silent pauses or ‘hmm’. This indicates to me that it’s not just a single mental action, but a whole different stance.
I think it’s similar to what is spoken about in HPMOR with most people just playing a role and doing what they think someone in that role should do, but others genuinely optimising—but I don’t think I’ve escaped the mode of playing a role, I just sometimes manage to play the role of an agenty person rather than the role of a useless person. It turns out that if you play the role of someone who optimises everything and Gets Stuff Done, you get stuff done. (Sometimes.)
This definitely feels like two very different mental postures. I’m not actually sure how I induce the agenty state from the ineffective state, but I have identified a number of things that might have to do with it, from social pressure, to bright lights, to having a solid idea of what agentyness looks like from observing good role models. The last idea (watching a role model and knowing what agentyness looks like) was reinforced in my mind when I heard a friend saying similar things recently, so to improve my mental posture I’m going to try and watch more awesome people work so I get an idea of what awesomeness looks like, and then try to play that role more and the ‘useless kid’ role less. I also really like your suggestions!