I have an instrument that helps me mitigate decision fatigue, energy lack and conformism. I created an updatable random generator with a weighted list of all the ideas and activities that cross my mind. I exercise agency at the state of “designing” the free time passage, setting probability weights and side goals. Then I can circumvent fatigue of deciding what to do next, because i can click generate and it see the option. And since clicking generator button is a short action, a habit to actually go and execute the option can be formed.
Minmaxing trap is not happening. I am only allowed to do one edit per finished session, and that edit can be just an increment by 1 or a decrement by 1 of some parameter in the generator, which takes ~15 seconds. If my priorities change, the generator will eventually converge (easy-in over couple days) through the increments to the new state. That prevents “being hyped” and placing “all in” into some new exciting project. The new project will gain weight only if it keeps looking worthy.
I may adjust at the end of a session if i feel that something should happen sooner/more often, or something was promted too often over the past week, or i felt that the session time length was inappropriate to make an unregressable progress, etc.
I put anything I want to do eventually. That includes “work on the publication”, “work on fanfic”, “make the geolocation script”, “update my transformer”, “play a match of king of the hill chess”, “calisthenics”, “solve project euler problem”, “go to the cinema and watch avatar 3″. Both fun and serious stuff.
I am only generating the activity when there is a moment no scheduled/obligation activities, this way it never interferes with life even if fun activities start randomly appearing more often.
The generator is implemented in Google Sheets, using its in-cell functions, thus accessable on both my pc and phone. At some point I have added a column of calculated expectations “how many % of time is expected to be spent on the activity if the generator did not change parameters over a long run”, but it was distracting and not exactly meaningful, since i change weights every day to reflect energy/mood/inspirations.
I have an instrument that helps me mitigate decision fatigue, energy lack and conformism. I created an updatable random generator with a weighted list of all the ideas and activities that cross my mind. I exercise agency at the state of “designing” the free time passage, setting probability weights and side goals. Then I can circumvent fatigue of deciding what to do next, because i can click generate and it see the option. And since clicking generator button is a short action, a habit to actually go and execute the option can be formed.
Sounds interesting.
How often do you adjust this generator? What tasks do you put on it? Do you have any examples? Do you find yourself min maxing probabilities?
Minmaxing trap is not happening. I am only allowed to do one edit per finished session, and that edit can be just an increment by 1 or a decrement by 1 of some parameter in the generator, which takes ~15 seconds. If my priorities change, the generator will eventually converge (easy-in over couple days) through the increments to the new state. That prevents “being hyped” and placing “all in” into some new exciting project. The new project will gain weight only if it keeps looking worthy.
I may adjust at the end of a session if i feel that something should happen sooner/more often, or something was promted too often over the past week, or i felt that the session time length was inappropriate to make an unregressable progress, etc.
I put anything I want to do eventually. That includes “work on the publication”, “work on fanfic”, “make the geolocation script”, “update my transformer”, “play a match of king of the hill chess”, “calisthenics”, “solve project euler problem”, “go to the cinema and watch avatar 3″. Both fun and serious stuff.
I am only generating the activity when there is a moment no scheduled/obligation activities, this way it never interferes with life even if fun activities start randomly appearing more often.
The generator is implemented in Google Sheets, using its in-cell functions, thus accessable on both my pc and phone. At some point I have added a column of calculated expectations “how many % of time is expected to be spent on the activity if the generator did not change parameters over a long run”, but it was distracting and not exactly meaningful, since i change weights every day to reflect energy/mood/inspirations.
oh wow this is a really cool idea. i’ll give it a try