I attended the July minicamp and found it quite useful. I’ve read through the Sequences, so not all of the material felt new, but interacting with the instructors and other campers made me a lot more attentive to opportunities to optimize in my day to day life. Here are some benefits:
Thinking more about ways to use fungibility to reach a desired outcome more cheaply/easily/painlessly—I already tended to think this way with regard to monetary expenditures (“You’re not getting a drink?” “No, it doesn’t give me one chocolate lava cake unit of pleasure, and they’re the same price”) but minicamp helped me apply this to decisions where the units aren’t so clearly denominated (Can I make my friend happy by doing a different thing for her? etc)
Breaking tasks and decisions into small tasks—instead of blaming myself when I don’t do something I want to want to do, coming up with ways to make it easier to get the task done. Maybe rewards, maybe beeminder, maybe thinking about TDT. But not just thinking “I should be willful enough to get this done without crutches”
Getting things done/efficiency advice—the tools I’ve found most helpful are beeminder, remember the milk, and pomodoros. I do freelance writing/blogging and the time it takes me to write posts has declined by easily 50% since minicamp. (I’ve promptly filled the spare time with other tasks, so I’m still stressed). RTM means I don’t drop casual committments (“I’ll send you the article when I get home”) and am better about assigning tasks to specific days (“I’ll clean the shower Saturday morning, not ‘by the end of the week’”). That means they’re more likely to get done and it’s easier for me to notice when I’ve overscheduled.
There are a lot of places to pick up getting-more-done advice, but what was really useful about CFAR’s camp was they didn’t just give you a list of skills. They taught you how to spot triggers that a skill was relevant to a problem you’re facing. Remembering the skills is no good if you don’t know when to deploy them. (Just thinking “I should think about fungibility more” isn’t as useful as “When I think ‘I wish I didn’t need to X, but I have no choice’ I should think specifically about fungibility and see if that’s true).
Also: the people were nice, the food was excellent (dill ricotta bread as a side dish, nom nom), and there was a fun prediction market game going through the week where the incentives got really screwy. “Probability that a randomly selected prediction market will be settled at False” “Probability that [specific instructor] will have been thrown in the pool by Tuesday noon”
We came up with a betting strategy to form a thowing the instructor in the pool posse which prompted the following conversation:
“What if someone writes a higher estimate than it’s their turn to?” “Then we all defect and they’re on the hook for their high guess.” “Will that be enough of an incentive?” “Ok, we’ll also all commit to throwing defectors in the pool.”
I had a lovely, productive time, and I’m glad to answer questions in reply comments.
I attended the July minicamp and found it quite useful. I’ve read through the Sequences, so not all of the material felt new, but interacting with the instructors and other campers made me a lot more attentive to opportunities to optimize in my day to day life. Here are some benefits:
Thinking more about ways to use fungibility to reach a desired outcome more cheaply/easily/painlessly—I already tended to think this way with regard to monetary expenditures (“You’re not getting a drink?” “No, it doesn’t give me one chocolate lava cake unit of pleasure, and they’re the same price”) but minicamp helped me apply this to decisions where the units aren’t so clearly denominated (Can I make my friend happy by doing a different thing for her? etc)
Breaking tasks and decisions into small tasks—instead of blaming myself when I don’t do something I want to want to do, coming up with ways to make it easier to get the task done. Maybe rewards, maybe beeminder, maybe thinking about TDT. But not just thinking “I should be willful enough to get this done without crutches”
Getting things done/efficiency advice—the tools I’ve found most helpful are beeminder, remember the milk, and pomodoros. I do freelance writing/blogging and the time it takes me to write posts has declined by easily 50% since minicamp. (I’ve promptly filled the spare time with other tasks, so I’m still stressed). RTM means I don’t drop casual committments (“I’ll send you the article when I get home”) and am better about assigning tasks to specific days (“I’ll clean the shower Saturday morning, not ‘by the end of the week’”). That means they’re more likely to get done and it’s easier for me to notice when I’ve overscheduled.
There are a lot of places to pick up getting-more-done advice, but what was really useful about CFAR’s camp was they didn’t just give you a list of skills. They taught you how to spot triggers that a skill was relevant to a problem you’re facing. Remembering the skills is no good if you don’t know when to deploy them. (Just thinking “I should think about fungibility more” isn’t as useful as “When I think ‘I wish I didn’t need to X, but I have no choice’ I should think specifically about fungibility and see if that’s true).
Also: the people were nice, the food was excellent (dill ricotta bread as a side dish, nom nom), and there was a fun prediction market game going through the week where the incentives got really screwy. “Probability that a randomly selected prediction market will be settled at False” “Probability that [specific instructor] will have been thrown in the pool by Tuesday noon”
We came up with a betting strategy to form a thowing the instructor in the pool posse which prompted the following conversation:
I had a lovely, productive time, and I’m glad to answer questions in reply comments.