Yes? Those all sound like some of my meta-goals. Perhaps the most important meta-goals for me in this context are that I want to (a) greatly enjoy my leisure time, and (b) consciously choose how much leisure time to engage in. Neither is happening right now.
I will definitely try the rubbing alcohol thing; I had never heard of that. My finger muscles also cramp up, but faster calluses sound like they’d help.
Unfortunately, I have tried all of your other suggestions, and they have not worked. Idle games don’t satisfy my urge for interaction, video chat doesn’t feel like hanging out to me, people keep promising to move to SF “soon” (much like the people who pledge to attend SF LW meetups), and four different website-blockers have failed for me. The main problem with the website blockers is that most popular flash-games are mirrored on arbitrarily many websites, and i need access to the Internet to get my work done.
I found that what reduced my low-value leisure time most was doing something incredibly fun, by explicitly optimizing for it. Then when I went back to i.e. reading webcomics, it seemed mildly repulsive in that it wasn’t actually that fun.
I suspect, but am not sure that, having a large amount of fun when you have fun
1) Reduces the amount of time you’ll spend having fun, in that it satiates your quota earlier.
2) Causes you to consciously choose how much leisure time to have, because it’s hard to default into really fun behaviors as procrastination.
I also tried
1) allowing myself to do anything I wanted, as long as I planned it at least half an hour in advance (if you have a pre-set quitting time this could help?)
2) Setting a timer to interrupt every 15 minutes and ask me what I was doing. One of my main problems was cost-insensitivity to time; playing a computer game for 5 hours did not feel almost any more a waste of time than doing it for 1 hour.
Please let me know if any of these work, so I know whether to recommend them to others in the future.
Would a group of close (but new) friends work? You could try systematically developing a new friends.
Has the problem with website blockers been that you need to need to manually block specific websites?
What about puzzles? Drawing/painting/sculpting? You may enjoy these even if you’re not skilled at these things.
People watching? Summer is good for that.
Does learning new stuff (not necessarily challenging stuff) count as ‘low energy’ for you? You might try learning a variety of interesting parlor tricks/neat skills.
have you thought about getting a dog or a cat?
have you thought about meditation?
It may help to optimize your subgoals goals separately
For example, to not be addicted to any one thing, you might try spreading your time between several different activities that you don’t find hard to do, reading, computer games etc. Needing leisure is different than being addicted to this one kind of activity. For moderately productive leisure, you might try playing http://fold.it/portal/.
Yes, new close friends would help. I’m working on that.
Needing to manually block specific websites is part of the problem; it would be useful if I could enable only a list of say, 12 websites and block all other access to the internet by default.
Jigsaw puzzles might be a good leisure activity, at least at home. At some point I will likely enjoy drawing/painting/sculpting in the context of a class, but I have tried doing all 3 ‘just for fun’, and I am only very rarely in the mood to indulge my creative artist when the end result resembles something done by a talented six-year-old.
People watching is what I do on the bus, while walking, while eating alone, etc. I enjoy it, but I get enough of it already.
Learning new parlor tricks is pretty much the epitome of high-energy for me. I hate the pressure of thinking that I’m supposed to impress people, and I hate the tedium of repeating the same task over and over until I get it not just right but robustly right, so that I know it’ll work fine in a performance.
I have not fairly re-evaluated my decision to not have a pet in several years. I live in a pet-free apartment right now, but I’ll think about it for real next time I move. Thank you!
I would very much like to practice mediation more, and usually experience it as low-energy, but I find that I cannot meditate while sleep-deprived, and that I have a hard time keeping a regular enough sleep schedule to catch up on sleep because I am playing games half the night several nights a month.
The protein-folder looks neat. The problem with diversifying my leisure portfolio is that it makes it more attractive...I experience some diminishing returns on just computer games and eventually wander off, but if I allow myself to read and watch TV and play games, then I can go 72 hrs without leaving my apartment, no sweat. I will think about how else I might be able to separately optimize.
I suffer from a similar problem of getting distracted at work. Thinking and learning more about luke’s procrastination post, specifically the hyperbolic discounting part made me understand why switching to mildly rewarding tasks was so attractive. Hyperbolic discounting means that a task who’s rewards are low overall but is slightly more pleasant right now can be intensely motivating.
RescueTime does do blocking of ‘everything with exceptions’. It categorizes websites (not sure how) and you say whether each category is distracting or not distracting. You could simply say everything is distracting but unblock the specific websites you do need to use. This is what I use at work. When I use it, it works. The trouble is making myself use it, I think maybe random reminders to use it might help here. Even when I don’t use the blocking part the productivity tracking is interesting and useful.
Another option is an XKCD-style 30 second delay before loading a page. This lowers the attractiveness of switching tasks by taking advantage of hyperbolic discounting and increasing the delay till reward which can drastically reduce your motivation to do those other things. The comments section links to a couple different extensions, and I you can find more by searching for “xkcd delay extension” or some such.
Does reading academic or semi-academic papers count as ‘low energy entertainment’? If it’s not quite interesting enough, you could try the gamification strategy of tasking yourself with highlighting the important parts. You could try to hooking up with someone researching some field in order to do a LW post and help them doing research.
Yes? Those all sound like some of my meta-goals. Perhaps the most important meta-goals for me in this context are that I want to (a) greatly enjoy my leisure time, and (b) consciously choose how much leisure time to engage in. Neither is happening right now.
I will definitely try the rubbing alcohol thing; I had never heard of that. My finger muscles also cramp up, but faster calluses sound like they’d help.
Unfortunately, I have tried all of your other suggestions, and they have not worked. Idle games don’t satisfy my urge for interaction, video chat doesn’t feel like hanging out to me, people keep promising to move to SF “soon” (much like the people who pledge to attend SF LW meetups), and four different website-blockers have failed for me. The main problem with the website blockers is that most popular flash-games are mirrored on arbitrarily many websites, and i need access to the Internet to get my work done.
Thanks for trying!
I found that what reduced my low-value leisure time most was doing something incredibly fun, by explicitly optimizing for it. Then when I went back to i.e. reading webcomics, it seemed mildly repulsive in that it wasn’t actually that fun. I suspect, but am not sure that, having a large amount of fun when you have fun 1) Reduces the amount of time you’ll spend having fun, in that it satiates your quota earlier. 2) Causes you to consciously choose how much leisure time to have, because it’s hard to default into really fun behaviors as procrastination.
I also tried 1) allowing myself to do anything I wanted, as long as I planned it at least half an hour in advance (if you have a pre-set quitting time this could help?) 2) Setting a timer to interrupt every 15 minutes and ask me what I was doing. One of my main problems was cost-insensitivity to time; playing a computer game for 5 hours did not feel almost any more a waste of time than doing it for 1 hour.
Please let me know if any of these work, so I know whether to recommend them to others in the future.
I have a variety of random suggestions:
Would a group of close (but new) friends work? You could try systematically developing a new friends.
Has the problem with website blockers been that you need to need to manually block specific websites?
What about puzzles? Drawing/painting/sculpting? You may enjoy these even if you’re not skilled at these things.
People watching? Summer is good for that.
Does learning new stuff (not necessarily challenging stuff) count as ‘low energy’ for you? You might try learning a variety of interesting parlor tricks/neat skills.
have you thought about getting a dog or a cat?
have you thought about meditation?
It may help to optimize your subgoals goals separately
For example, to not be addicted to any one thing, you might try spreading your time between several different activities that you don’t find hard to do, reading, computer games etc. Needing leisure is different than being addicted to this one kind of activity. For moderately productive leisure, you might try playing http://fold.it/portal/.
Yes, new close friends would help. I’m working on that.
Needing to manually block specific websites is part of the problem; it would be useful if I could enable only a list of say, 12 websites and block all other access to the internet by default.
Jigsaw puzzles might be a good leisure activity, at least at home. At some point I will likely enjoy drawing/painting/sculpting in the context of a class, but I have tried doing all 3 ‘just for fun’, and I am only very rarely in the mood to indulge my creative artist when the end result resembles something done by a talented six-year-old.
People watching is what I do on the bus, while walking, while eating alone, etc. I enjoy it, but I get enough of it already.
Learning new parlor tricks is pretty much the epitome of high-energy for me. I hate the pressure of thinking that I’m supposed to impress people, and I hate the tedium of repeating the same task over and over until I get it not just right but robustly right, so that I know it’ll work fine in a performance.
I have not fairly re-evaluated my decision to not have a pet in several years. I live in a pet-free apartment right now, but I’ll think about it for real next time I move. Thank you!
I would very much like to practice mediation more, and usually experience it as low-energy, but I find that I cannot meditate while sleep-deprived, and that I have a hard time keeping a regular enough sleep schedule to catch up on sleep because I am playing games half the night several nights a month.
The protein-folder looks neat. The problem with diversifying my leisure portfolio is that it makes it more attractive...I experience some diminishing returns on just computer games and eventually wander off, but if I allow myself to read and watch TV and play games, then I can go 72 hrs without leaving my apartment, no sweat. I will think about how else I might be able to separately optimize.
I suffer from a similar problem of getting distracted at work. Thinking and learning more about luke’s procrastination post, specifically the hyperbolic discounting part made me understand why switching to mildly rewarding tasks was so attractive. Hyperbolic discounting means that a task who’s rewards are low overall but is slightly more pleasant right now can be intensely motivating.
RescueTime does do blocking of ‘everything with exceptions’. It categorizes websites (not sure how) and you say whether each category is distracting or not distracting. You could simply say everything is distracting but unblock the specific websites you do need to use. This is what I use at work. When I use it, it works. The trouble is making myself use it, I think maybe random reminders to use it might help here. Even when I don’t use the blocking part the productivity tracking is interesting and useful.
Another option is an XKCD-style 30 second delay before loading a page. This lowers the attractiveness of switching tasks by taking advantage of hyperbolic discounting and increasing the delay till reward which can drastically reduce your motivation to do those other things. The comments section links to a couple different extensions, and I you can find more by searching for “xkcd delay extension” or some such.
Does reading academic or semi-academic papers count as ‘low energy entertainment’? If it’s not quite interesting enough, you could try the gamification strategy of tasking yourself with highlighting the important parts. You could try to hooking up with someone researching some field in order to do a LW post and help them doing research.