It begins with noticing, and continues by doing. Just from systematically noticing what you are doing, in any sphere, what you do changes even without making a special effort to change. Yvain mentioned this happening for him in footnote 5.
Once you see, clearly, that there is a choice in front of you, and what it is, it is no more possible to choose what you think is wrong than believe what you think is false.
Some of what follows goes way back before OB, which is one of various things I have studied or done—a major one, but there are others—on the matter of how to think better. The first, for example, I describe as inside vs. outside view, because that is what it is. The practice goes back longer; OB gave it a name.
I. Getting out of bed in the morning. That may seem a trifle, but there is no time at which rationality does not matter, and an hour a day is more than a trifle. The inside view whispers seductively to just laze on half-awake, or drift off to sleep again. The outside view reminds me that it has been my invariable experience that lazing on does not wake me up, that the only thing that does is getting up and moving around, and that in twenty minutes after getting up (my typical boot time for both mind and body) I will be more satisfied with myself, the sooner I did so.
The more clearly I can contemplate the outside view, the easier it becomes to make a move. I can’t claim expert proficiency in this. I still get up much faster when I have a specific three-alarm-clock reason, the moment the wristwatch pinger goes off.
II. I began taking much better care of my money after I instituted the simple exercise of recording every transaction on a spreadsheet, and estimating all of my expenses month by month out to a year ahead. And this without having to make any particular resolutions to limit my spending on this or that, or to save some fixed amount. I just have to look at my savings account, and other stores of money not to be casually drawn on, to see the difference. Sometimes noticing is all it takes, and the doing takes care of itself.
You cannot fix errors that you do not know you are making. That includes errors that you are looking straight at, without realising that they are errors. (Our chief weapon is noticing. Noticing, and discernment. Our two weapons...)
III. I have learned that whatever the person in front of me is saying, it makes sense to them, no matter confused or wrong it may seem to me. Even if they are lying, there is still a reason. Therefore, I look for the greatest possible sense and address that, whether I’m dealing with a student, a colleague, someone being wrong on the Internet, or anyone else. Or as it was put, “you must fight not only the creature you encounter; you must fight the most horrible thing that can be constructed from its corpse.” The application is wider than fighting.
As I said, my experiences of a lot of this go back way before reading OB. Most of what is said on OB can also be found elsewhere—a significant part of it is links to elsewhere. But that is only because the truth is constant and discoverable by anyone, so it is unsurprising when it has been. A lot of what is valuable in OB/LW is to draw its material together in a coherent body.
(Edited to defeat the software’s too-clever handling of the originally Arabic-numbered paragraphs.)
On point 2, I wonder how to generalize this lesson. I can see that many people follow similar practices for tracking their spending, and many of them claim similar benefits. But how would you know where else to apply the technique? Few people claim to do the same thing with their time; why is that different? How would you suggest generalizing this approach? What other arenas might it be applicable in? Or is only valuable for increasing awareness of expenses?
It goes beyond increasing awareness: whatever you increase your attention to, within yourself, almost inevitably changes. It has been suggested that there is a fundamental brain mechanism operating here: reorganisation follows attention.
Claimer: I have known and worked with William Powers (whose work is described in that link) for many years. Often while reading OB or LW I have itched to recommend his works, but have held off for fear of seeming to be touting a personal hobbyhorse. But I really do think he Has Something. (BTW, I did not have any hand in writing the Wiki article.)
Yvain mentioned that looking at his application of rationality is tending to increase it. Steven Barnes recommends the practice of stopping every three hours during the day to meditate for 5 minutes on your major life goals. To-do lists help get things done. Some recommend writing down each day’s goals in the morning and reviewing them in the evening. Attention, in fact, is a staple of practically every teaching relating to personal development, whether rationalistic or religious. You cannot change what you are doing until you see what you are doing.
It begins with noticing, and continues by doing. Just from systematically noticing what you are doing, in any sphere, what you do changes even without making a special effort to change. Yvain mentioned this happening for him in footnote 5.
Once you see, clearly, that there is a choice in front of you, and what it is, it is no more possible to choose what you think is wrong than believe what you think is false.
This comment is helpful, but if you could include some examples that use concrete nouns, it would be more helpful.
Thank you for pressing me for concrete details.
Some of what follows goes way back before OB, which is one of various things I have studied or done—a major one, but there are others—on the matter of how to think better. The first, for example, I describe as inside vs. outside view, because that is what it is. The practice goes back longer; OB gave it a name.
I. Getting out of bed in the morning. That may seem a trifle, but there is no time at which rationality does not matter, and an hour a day is more than a trifle. The inside view whispers seductively to just laze on half-awake, or drift off to sleep again. The outside view reminds me that it has been my invariable experience that lazing on does not wake me up, that the only thing that does is getting up and moving around, and that in twenty minutes after getting up (my typical boot time for both mind and body) I will be more satisfied with myself, the sooner I did so.
The more clearly I can contemplate the outside view, the easier it becomes to make a move. I can’t claim expert proficiency in this. I still get up much faster when I have a specific three-alarm-clock reason, the moment the wristwatch pinger goes off.
II. I began taking much better care of my money after I instituted the simple exercise of recording every transaction on a spreadsheet, and estimating all of my expenses month by month out to a year ahead. And this without having to make any particular resolutions to limit my spending on this or that, or to save some fixed amount. I just have to look at my savings account, and other stores of money not to be casually drawn on, to see the difference. Sometimes noticing is all it takes, and the doing takes care of itself.
You cannot fix errors that you do not know you are making. That includes errors that you are looking straight at, without realising that they are errors. (Our chief weapon is noticing. Noticing, and discernment. Our two weapons...)
III. I have learned that whatever the person in front of me is saying, it makes sense to them, no matter confused or wrong it may seem to me. Even if they are lying, there is still a reason. Therefore, I look for the greatest possible sense and address that, whether I’m dealing with a student, a colleague, someone being wrong on the Internet, or anyone else. Or as it was put, “you must fight not only the creature you encounter; you must fight the most horrible thing that can be constructed from its corpse.” The application is wider than fighting.
As I said, my experiences of a lot of this go back way before reading OB. Most of what is said on OB can also be found elsewhere—a significant part of it is links to elsewhere. But that is only because the truth is constant and discoverable by anyone, so it is unsurprising when it has been. A lot of what is valuable in OB/LW is to draw its material together in a coherent body.
(Edited to defeat the software’s too-clever handling of the originally Arabic-numbered paragraphs.)
You can backslash the period to defeat automatic list formatting:
looks like:
2. Two
Foo
1. One
More details here.
Edited to add: Excellent comment, by the way.
Thank you for the link.
On point 2, I wonder how to generalize this lesson. I can see that many people follow similar practices for tracking their spending, and many of them claim similar benefits. But how would you know where else to apply the technique? Few people claim to do the same thing with their time; why is that different? How would you suggest generalizing this approach? What other arenas might it be applicable in? Or is only valuable for increasing awareness of expenses?
It goes beyond increasing awareness: whatever you increase your attention to, within yourself, almost inevitably changes. It has been suggested that there is a fundamental brain mechanism operating here: reorganisation follows attention.
Claimer: I have known and worked with William Powers (whose work is described in that link) for many years. Often while reading OB or LW I have itched to recommend his works, but have held off for fear of seeming to be touting a personal hobbyhorse. But I really do think he Has Something. (BTW, I did not have any hand in writing the Wiki article.)
Yvain mentioned that looking at his application of rationality is tending to increase it. Steven Barnes recommends the practice of stopping every three hours during the day to meditate for 5 minutes on your major life goals. To-do lists help get things done. Some recommend writing down each day’s goals in the morning and reviewing them in the evening. Attention, in fact, is a staple of practically every teaching relating to personal development, whether rationalistic or religious. You cannot change what you are doing until you see what you are doing.
Actually I’ve been repeatedly recommended to track my time usage as a means of being aware of wasting it and then improving my time management.
Alas, I haven’t yet gotten around to actually trying it.