Splitting these into things that are time investments and things that you want to stop doing is one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is to divide things into recurring and non-recurring time investments. For example, exercising regularly is a recurring time investment, that takes a few hours every week; but scouting out gyms, choosing an exercise routine and setting the precedent for doing it is a one-time investment. For things that look like recurring time investments, or that look daunting, try to split off one-shot tasks that move you in the right direction.
Spending a higher percentage of the time working at a computer actually getting stuff done, instead of getting distracted by the internet.
More concretely: Install Leechblock (or a similar plugin) to either give yourself a time limit, or limit which times of the day you can surf in. Make your blogreading more efficient with RSS feeds. Choose the site with the lowest intellectual content to addictiveness ratio and delete it from your bookmarks.
finding some recurring activity where I’ll probably meet the same people over and over to improve the odds of making longterm friends.
More concretely: Browse meetup.com and similar sites for recurring activities in your area which others have organized.
Improving my diet, which mostly means eating less cheese. I really like cheese, so this is difficult.
It is much easier to change your diet by adding things than by removing things. To displace cheese, add other sources of fat and protein. However, removing cheese from your diet would not necessarily be an improvement, and it’s unlikely to be the best available improvement.
Stop making so many off-color jokes. Somewhere there is a line between doing it ironically and actually contributing to overall weight of prejudice, and I think I’ve crossed that line.
More concretely: come up with some general-purpose jokes that aren’t off-color, and start using those instead.
Somehow stop losing things so much, and/or being generally careless/clumsy. I lost my wallet and dropped my lap top in the space of a month, and manage to lose a wide array of smaller things on a regular basis. It ends up costing me a lot of money.
More concretely: cultivate the habit of checking your inventory whenever you exit a building (even if you really do have everything). Put some thought into how you manage the inventory items you tend to carry. Throw out any clothes with insufficient pockets.
Thought I’d check in and let people now how their advice has paid off so far:
Just wanted to followup on how these suggestions have actually worked out for me:
1) I installed “Stay Focused” (Leechblock for chrome). It has definitely helped, although I’m not sure how much. At the very least it makes me aware of how much time i’m spending. An issue is that approximately every few minutes, the programs I work with take 30 − 200 seconds to save or open a file (I do computer animation), so a substantial fraction of the day is spent waiting, during which I could be surfing (or doing something) and after the 10 minutes of surf-time I gave myself expired, I started finding new sites that I hadn’t blocked yet. Today I tried the “nuclear option” which just blocks all internet except a few sites that I specify, and I think that worked better.
2) I’ve been making an effort to jog instead of walk whenever I need to go somewhere and occasionally just did it because. I haven’t reached my goal of “20 minutes of solid exercise,” but if I were able to maintain the amount I’ve been doing over the past week I’d be less worried about my health.
3) Someone gave me a bunch of cheese for Christmas, but despite that I think I’ve actually been doing okay. Again, if I actually maintained the amount I ate this week I’d be less worried about health. I’m under no illusions that’ll actually happen without making some additional effort to find a replacement food for the cheese niche.
4) Today I got on the bus, took my hat off, and then left it on my seat. I only remembered it because some lady said “hey, you forgot your hat!” So… the “losing things” issue is still looking pretty not-good. I guess I should try to put everything “detachable” in my backpack as soon as I sit down, but in some situations that’s not feasible. (Either I don’t have a backpack or the item doesn’t fit).
5) Going to a crazy top hat party this weekend, which isn’t a recurring activity but will make me feel good enough that I can postpone finding one for another week before I start feeling guilty again. Yay?
Splitting these into things that are time investments and things that you want to stop doing is one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is to divide things into recurring and non-recurring time investments. For example, exercising regularly is a recurring time investment, that takes a few hours every week; but scouting out gyms, choosing an exercise routine and setting the precedent for doing it is a one-time investment. For things that look like recurring time investments, or that look daunting, try to split off one-shot tasks that move you in the right direction.
More concretely: Install Leechblock (or a similar plugin) to either give yourself a time limit, or limit which times of the day you can surf in. Make your blogreading more efficient with RSS feeds. Choose the site with the lowest intellectual content to addictiveness ratio and delete it from your bookmarks.
More concretely: Browse meetup.com and similar sites for recurring activities in your area which others have organized.
It is much easier to change your diet by adding things than by removing things. To displace cheese, add other sources of fat and protein. However, removing cheese from your diet would not necessarily be an improvement, and it’s unlikely to be the best available improvement.
More concretely: come up with some general-purpose jokes that aren’t off-color, and start using those instead.
More concretely: cultivate the habit of checking your inventory whenever you exit a building (even if you really do have everything). Put some thought into how you manage the inventory items you tend to carry. Throw out any clothes with insufficient pockets.
Such good suggestions. Your mom must have done something right. :)
Upvoted for sharing half my genes
Thought I’d check in and let people now how their advice has paid off so far:
Just wanted to followup on how these suggestions have actually worked out for me:
1) I installed “Stay Focused” (Leechblock for chrome). It has definitely helped, although I’m not sure how much. At the very least it makes me aware of how much time i’m spending. An issue is that approximately every few minutes, the programs I work with take 30 − 200 seconds to save or open a file (I do computer animation), so a substantial fraction of the day is spent waiting, during which I could be surfing (or doing something) and after the 10 minutes of surf-time I gave myself expired, I started finding new sites that I hadn’t blocked yet. Today I tried the “nuclear option” which just blocks all internet except a few sites that I specify, and I think that worked better.
2) I’ve been making an effort to jog instead of walk whenever I need to go somewhere and occasionally just did it because. I haven’t reached my goal of “20 minutes of solid exercise,” but if I were able to maintain the amount I’ve been doing over the past week I’d be less worried about my health.
3) Someone gave me a bunch of cheese for Christmas, but despite that I think I’ve actually been doing okay. Again, if I actually maintained the amount I ate this week I’d be less worried about health. I’m under no illusions that’ll actually happen without making some additional effort to find a replacement food for the cheese niche.
4) Today I got on the bus, took my hat off, and then left it on my seat. I only remembered it because some lady said “hey, you forgot your hat!” So… the “losing things” issue is still looking pretty not-good. I guess I should try to put everything “detachable” in my backpack as soon as I sit down, but in some situations that’s not feasible. (Either I don’t have a backpack or the item doesn’t fit).
5) Going to a crazy top hat party this weekend, which isn’t a recurring activity but will make me feel good enough that I can postpone finding one for another week before I start feeling guilty again. Yay?