Very nice post. I empathise with a lot of things here.
I have a personal feeling about the rationalist discourse around 'ugh fields' and the like that I want to share. This is very much a *personal* take, not necessarily objective reality nor applicable to others. It's just what I feel for myself.
First, I think it's great. I think that the more we can get into the nuts-and-bolts of how aversion works, the more we can do cool things like aversion factoring, and the more we can target Moloch rather than just brute-forcing our way through and thereby sorta-failing anyway.
But my other feeling is that sometimes, it goes too far. In that sometimes, I do just need to get things done, and I do just need to *do it*, and it doesn't matter what CFAR or whoever else has to say on the matter.
(Of course, the reality is that my problem is with *non true-to-reality interpretations of CFAR-type stuff*, rather than actual true-to-reality interpretations).
Like, for me, I imagine if I had some high-powered consulting job, and I needed to get X done TODAY, and I said to my manager 'sorry, I have an ugh field around that'. The response would be: 'what's an ugh field?' and also 'I don't care. Get it done.'
(And maybe then it would become a Good Task for me. I empathise with the Bad-Task-Good-Task switching you describe.)
I do worry though about how certain circles end up straying from typical norms around certain things, and how this might end up (for me, and maybe others?) with a lack of 'touching grass', so-to-speak.
That said, I do think that the typical kind of rationalist IDC/'ugh field' way of thinking about 'nnnggg, I don't wanna!' is true-to-reality. I'm just sometimes unsure that it's true-to-usefulness in myself.
Something that I've found helpful for Bad Tasks recently is to use the 5 minute pomodoros I mentioned in the Day Plan post. The protocol (details still to be refined, I've only done this a few times so far) goes something like:
1. Do a 5 minute Pomodoro on the task. Absolutely definitively stop at the end of the 5 minutes.
2. If the task feels less Bad for having done the Pomodoro, do a second one.
3. If I still don't wanna, OK then don't. Otherwise maybe try a more serious Pomodoro on it and see how that goes.
The part of me that doesn't wanna do the task is generally much more willing to engage with it once it knows that a) It's not actually as bad as it feared and b) If it was genuinely terrible it would be allowed to stop, and this seems pretty good for conveying that to it.
Very nice post. I empathise with a lot of things here.
I have a personal feeling about the rationalist discourse around 'ugh fields' and the like that I want to share. This is very much a *personal* take, not necessarily objective reality nor applicable to others. It's just what I feel for myself.
First, I think it's great. I think that the more we can get into the nuts-and-bolts of how aversion works, the more we can do cool things like aversion factoring, and the more we can target Moloch rather than just brute-forcing our way through and thereby sorta-failing anyway.
But my other feeling is that sometimes, it goes too far. In that sometimes, I do just need to get things done, and I do just need to *do it*, and it doesn't matter what CFAR or whoever else has to say on the matter.
(Of course, the reality is that my problem is with *non true-to-reality interpretations of CFAR-type stuff*, rather than actual true-to-reality interpretations).
Like, for me, I imagine if I had some high-powered consulting job, and I needed to get X done TODAY, and I said to my manager 'sorry, I have an ugh field around that'. The response would be: 'what's an ugh field?' and also 'I don't care. Get it done.'
(And maybe then it would become a Good Task for me. I empathise with the Bad-Task-Good-Task switching you describe.)
I do worry though about how certain circles end up straying from typical norms around certain things, and how this might end up (for me, and maybe others?) with a lack of 'touching grass', so-to-speak.
That said, I do think that the typical kind of rationalist IDC/'ugh field' way of thinking about 'nnnggg, I don't wanna!' is true-to-reality. I'm just sometimes unsure that it's true-to-usefulness in myself.
Something that I've found helpful for Bad Tasks recently is to use the 5 minute pomodoros I mentioned in the Day Plan post. The protocol (details still to be refined, I've only done this a few times so far) goes something like:
1. Do a 5 minute Pomodoro on the task. Absolutely definitively stop at the end of the 5 minutes.
2. If the task feels less Bad for having done the Pomodoro, do a second one.
3. If I still don't wanna, OK then don't. Otherwise maybe try a more serious Pomodoro on it and see how that goes.
The part of me that doesn't wanna do the task is generally much more willing to engage with it once it knows that a) It's not actually as bad as it feared and b) If it was genuinely terrible it would be allowed to stop, and this seems pretty good for conveying that to it.