Thanks, this is a great post. I concur with a majority of the points raised.
Broadly, I indulge in four kinds of activities: a) high effort- high short-term reward, b) high effort—high long-term reward c) low effort—high short-term reward d) low-effort—high long-term reward.
The many individual tasks that constitute work fall into the second category. However, if I Practice hard enough at these individual tasks, I hope to push them into the low-effort high long-term reward category. This would leave me with additional Willpower Reserves that I would use to fund other high effort high long-term reward activities.
When it comes to Work tasks, I don’t believe I hate these tasks themselves; what I do hate is my inability to perform these tasks in an efficient, speedy manner without having to resort to reading blogs like LW ( a low effort, high short-term reward item) to entertain myself while taking breaks from Work.
Also, I did not initially come to LW looking for high long-term rewards: I came to read interesting things written by smart people. My time reading sequences made me treat LW partially as a low effort high-long term reward item, and I thank patrissimo for pointing out that the instrumental deficiencies of LW renders this likely a fallacy.
Hi, I’m Rahul. I’ve intermittently visited LW for more than a year, refraining from commenting as it seemed optimal to shut up and update my beliefs regarding ideas I wasn’t very well informed about. I feel I’m better prepared to contribute now.
I studied engineering and physics at school, moving on to work at trading floors of investment banks where I got a real, ringside view of decision making under uncertainty. Today, I work as a social venture capitalist looking to help disadvantaged micro-entrepreneurs rise out of poverty.
Despite my life’s digressions, I retain a strong interest in philosophy, mathematics and computer science. My interest in rationality was initially piqued in my undergraduate years by the work of Kahneman and Tversky. I am mostly an auto-didact in the things I really enjoy, but I must confess that at 25, I often feel old and intellectually left behind. LessWrong helps me catch up.