I grew up as a fundamentalist Mormon in Utah, dropped out when I was 13, at 28, my thinking had evolved mightily and I had a Phd.
John Igo
Karma: 9
I’ve read HPMoR and the Sequences, but I’m new to this community too, so forgive a poorly written answer.
I’ve found goals that focus on effort rather than results are much better. e.g. I’d re-frame your “Write X blog...”, “Learn X new …”, “Read through X...” as “Spend X time writing …”, “Spend X time learning …”, “Spend X time reading...”
As a previous answer pointed out, this list is pretty focused on Less-Wrong style rationality, and not really wholistic improvement. Wholistic leveling up would focus effort on transferable skills—but that’s a lot harder to do, things like: eat X servings of vegetables, wake up at the same time every day, exercise X times per week, meditate X mornings a week, turn off electronics at 9 PM, wake up at the same time every day, spend time with friends …
Outside of the character buff stuff listed above, I try to have personal checklists (call loved ones X times per week, eat 2 dinners with friends...) and 2-3 work-like projects at any given time setting SMART goals working towards their completion. Right now the 3 are, wrapping up PhD research, designing new pieces of climbing equipment, writing up/completing old research ideas.
Wrapping up PhD research is broken down into: training new group members, analyzing old data, handing off research projects. Designing new pieces of climbing equipment breaks down to: CAD 3D models, print, test, repeat. Writing up/completing old research projects is easily the least well defined, but will involve a lot of Less-Wrong posts so the community can tell me how wrong my thinking is.
I hope that helps a little.
Edits for grammar
Haha! I love your first line.
I understand what you’re saying, we don’t have or want a prophet, and there are all kinds of things we believe that we wouldn’t want to canonize. However, there are a few things we all agree on right? Bayes Theorem + Gathering Data + certain rules of inference + …?