Thread by @EpistemicHope

Ok. Let's try and make a technique for each one of these.

https://twitter.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1361736814051098624

1.

My first suggestion is "TAPs", but I think that's too general.

Maybe something that puts you in a "long term mode" or helps you recall your specific long term desire?

https://twitter.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1361736814931955723?s=20

I've been getting mileage out of the "Bezos criterion": "When faced with a decision, let your 80 year old self decide."

Very crisp, for helping me steer towards the things that matter to me in the long run, without precluding meaningful things in the moment.

Another strategy of this flavor is the use of mantras that connect you with the meaning of your action.

When I wake up early in the cold and dark, and I don't feel like getting up, I have sometimes had a TAP of saying out loud "_Now_, is when I (can) claim my power."

Because that moment is sometimes hard, and there's temptation to go back to sleep, but it also has a lot of leverage on how good my day will be.

(My mantra is (maybe?) a little corny-sounding from the outside, but it has resonance, which is what matters.)

I guess this also ties in with TDT/FDT-style thinking: What you decide to do now is reflective of what you will decide to do in all similar circumstances, so the magnitude of your in this moment choice is non-trivial.

Also in this vein are general TAPs / mantras for self signaling, I've found Nate's "do the right thing, even when it's too late", to be a useful mantra lately.

mindingourway.com/self-signaling…

Particularly, open twitter, and then remind myself that I do the right thing even when it is too late, and then immediately close twitter.

Strategies for 1, that don't involve TAPs:

You could just practice (sorry, maybe that does secretly involve TAPs). For instance practice smelling the warm chocolate chip cookies and feeling the desire for them, and walking away anyway.

Or, in #3 of this comment, @AnnaWSalamon gives an example (originally from Andrew Critch) where you're ostentatiously self-signaling so that you know that you can do something.

lesswrong.com/posts/L6Ktf952…

Moving on to 2.

TAPs for noticing, straight up.

https://twitter.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1361736815766552579?s=20

3.

This sounds like strategies that involve shaping your affective responses to stuff.

https://twitter.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1361736816525799428?s=20

These are strategies like electively emphasizing different elements of an experience (like the doritos example in Nate’s post here), and other kinds of reframes, or Tony Robins’ process for working with...

mindingourway.com/habitual-produ…

...“neuro associations”: asking 1) what pain has kept me from taking this action in the past, 2) what pleasure have I gotten from not taking this action in the past, 3) what will it cost me if I don’t take this action?, 4) what pleasure will it bring me if I take this action.

Arguably, also this goal chaining technique.

lesswrong.com/posts/C74TQRgv…

(Maybe this is better classed as the first or last of Spencer's categories, instead?)

4.

TAPs again. But specifically TAPs that steer you AROUND the danger points in the first place.

In practice, this looks like doing frame-by-frame debugging to uncover key junctures that are easy to intervene on, and setting up interventions there.

https://twitter.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1361736817352069129?s=20

(It also reminds me of Nate's "Deregulating Distraction", though I've never really understood that, or got it to work for me.)

mindingourway.com/deregulating-d…

5.

This one seems hard to intervene on.

Probably there are strategies that can increase one's pain tolerance?

My first guess would be to just practice hard / painful things, like staying under a cold-water shower, to build tolerance.

https://twitter.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1361736818262171649?s=20

I find that I'm much better off with short, intense bursts of exercise, because I can something-like distract myself while I let the physical pattern run.

Exercise that I need to hold for long minutes is harder, because it tends to draw my attention to the pain.

Maybe there are other strategies for distracting yourself from pain?

I guess another approach here is learning to ENJOY pain.

There's a kind of pleasure in fasting, for instance, because you're exerting your will over your baser desires. "I'm in control of me, not my stomach."

6.

I think I basically covered approaches in this category above.

https://twitter.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/1361736819625328655?s=20

(I suspect that the type signature of 6 is not like the others. 6 seems like one mechanism by which the others can work.

@SpencrGreenberg, do you think that there is a principled distinction between 3 and 6?)

But in any case, another strategies in this category include invoking the "meaning" of an action or experience, so what would be tagged "bad" get's tagged as "good" instead.

Classic example: When you would be frustrated with something, you instead feel gratitude "for the opportunity to train."

Or the fasting example above.

Notably, two really big / important classes of interventions seem missing from this list, if someone were going to use it as a practical guide.

Both those classes entail not needing to use "self-control" at all.

The first thing that seems to be missing are approaches that are aiming for internal alignment / non-coercion.

If you're trying to do "self-control", that means that there is at least one part of you that is at odds with at least one other part of you. You're fighting yourself.

Much better is to not be in conflict in the first place.

Ideally, get all the relevant parts on the same page, by incorporating what all of them know, understand and want, so that they can cooperate, instead.

There are a bunch of approaches to this: Internal Family Systems, Internal Double Crux, Nate's Compassionate Austerity. Lots of people have their preferred framework.

mindingourway.com/productivity-t…

Probably the best place to start for that kind of thing is Gendlin Focusing.

(And the best place to start for Gendlin Focusing is the Audiobook.)

smile.amazon.com/Focusing-Eugen…

The second major class of interventions is perhaps the most important of all of these: intervening on the environment.

Humans are ecological creatures, and our behavior is determined in huge-part, by our context. The most practical way to change your behavior is to change your environment.

If you want to stop eating cookies, just don't have cookies in the house.

If you want to stop wasting time on facebook, block facebook.

If you want to exercise more, buy a squat rack so that you don't have to walk to the gym any more. Or even better, get a workout buddy.

(Probably you'll need to do some things in addition to buying a squat rack. I would guess that that alone wouldn't work for most people.

But I did learn in the pandemic this year, how much better it is to have weighs at home, even though my gym was only 10 minute walk from my house.

It turns out the difference between 10 minutes and 1 minute is really significant.

I don't think I'll ever not have my own barbell and weights for the rest of my life. It's just worth it.)

If you get internal alignment or crafting your environmental context right, you won't NEED self-control.

(Oh. And if you're wondering what TAPs are, or frame-by-frame-debugging, or some of the other terms I used, you can find out more with ctrl-f in this document.

TAPs stands for Trigger Action Planning)

rationality.org/files/CFAR_Han…

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