Are you doing what you should be doing?

“What am I doing? And why am I doing it?”

One method for increasing high utility productivity I thought up was choosing a specific well-defined answer for the second half (“Why am I doing it?”) and consistently checking to see if the answer to the first half satisfyingly aligns with the second half. For example, if I’d checked myself an hour ago, it’d be “I’m learning to program because I want to maximize the probability of FAI development.” Ideally the second half would be related to a ‘something to protect’ or ‘definite major purpose’ that stays constant over time and that you want to be consistently moving towards. If you’re already good at noticing rationalization this technique might work to induce cognitive dissonance when engaging in suboptimal courses of action. (Whether or not inducing cognitive dissonance in order to make yourself more productive is likely to work is open to debate. I suspect P.J. Eby would thoroughly disagree.) I’m going to try this over the next few days and see if the results are any better than how I’ve been doing recently. I am at a relative productivity high point right now though, so the data might not be too meaningful. I encourage others to see if this method works.

If you are equally good at explaining any plan, you have zero productivity.

An example that’s sorta inspired by my own thinking, though not exactly:

“I’m learning to program because I want to maximize the probability of FAI development.” …That doesn’t sound right. Maybe learning to program will help me think more rationally? But the connection is pretty loose, both from ‘learning to program’ to ‘improving the relevant thinking skills’ and from ‘me thinking better’ to ‘a greater probability of FAI development’. Maybe learning to program will help me get a job to donate to FAI development? Money is the unit of caring, after all. (Note: cached thought, re-examine carefully.) But to be honest, my comparative advantage doesn’t seem to be in making money. I should think about this more. Even so, I doubt programming is the best way for me to make money, since talking with Louie about it. Thus learning to program is probably a suboptimal action, though better than e.g. playing video games, if for whatever reason those were my only two options.

What to do, then? I should probably go ask ‘wedrifid’ from LW for a recommended book on neurochemistry so I can better understand nootropics; the FAI team (whoever they end up being) will need to be pretty smart, after all. I can see a direct link from better understanding nootropics to a better chance of FAI. “I’m studying nootropic-relevant neurochemistry because I want to maximize the probability of FAI development.” Probably still suboptimal, but a thorough improvement, and it will save me dozens of hours of suboptimal work. Yay for going meta! Wait though, are there ways to go more meta? After getting more familiar with the topic, I should probably find lots of people to talk to that know more about nootropics, and get information from them as to what nootropics will work best, and what areas of study I should be focusing on. That way I can save dozens of hours of suboptimal work. Yay for going meta! I should repeat this process until going meta no longer produces time-saving results.