I seem to do good intellectual work always and only when Im feeling playful for long stretches of time. If I want to have good ideas or write something thats actually worth reading, it never ever works for me to put down fun things, sit down at my desk, and think, Ok, Im going to work now. Ill probably create *something*, but itll be crap. When Im playful for several days at a time, on the other hand, I end up doing things like creating new CFAR units. I must have come to understand this, at least partially, toward the end of college. I originally started my blog to support my academic work; I was trying to encourage myself to indulge in unrelated but entertaining lines of thought. I didnt take it seriously enough, though. I think I was stuck at believing that work and play are different things, and if Im actually playing when Im purportedly working, Im being irresponsible. I wasnt very consequentialist. The kind of play Im talking about takes time and concentration, though, and I think I often have this attitude of, Well, if I have the cognitive resources to read an FHI article and think about it properly, I should be working instead, but since that doesnt sound like fun, I end up neither working nor reading the article, and instead I do the dishes or read fiction or something. Im working on a book of meditations and exercises for cognitive self-training, now, and Im in the process of figuring out what my routine should be. This morning I noticed that for the past couple of days, Ive been thinking something like, Im settling into my new environment, and tomorrow or the next day Ill get down to business. Which of course has caused me to not *want* to work on the book, because getting down to business doesnt sound fun at all. And I know from experience that if I tried that, it wouldnt work anyway. Instead of following my broken work patterns from school, Im going to try having a one or two hour play period at the beginning of the day where I have to optimize for fun. Not just for relaxing like reading a sci-fi novel in the sun. The idea is to get my brain really moving, to cultivate a spirit of curiosity and exploration. Im allowed to work directly on the book during that period, but only if it feels like the most fun thing to do. And Im going to optimize for *nothing but* play until Thursday, so my brain gets back in the hang of being focused and creative. I could use your help. What Id like you to do is leave (at least) one comment linking me to something you encountered recently that you thought was exciting, something delightful, something that made you think, something youre happy to have learned, or something youre proud to have written. Im especially interested in things that involve teaching, learning, how minds work, how minds fail to work, CBT, mindfulness, attention, expertise, and things that teach me new skills quickly enough that I can observe the whole process of skill acquisition in a single sitting. You can also post a question that has captivated you for whatever reason. Here are a few things that have sent my playfulness modules into overdrive in the past, just as examples: ~Vi Hart on hexiflexigation: https://youtube/watch?v=VIVIegSt81k&list=UUOGeU-1Fig3rrDjhm9Zs_wg ~Eliezers intuitive guide to Bayes Theorem: yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes ~Pretty much the entire Numberphile channel, but especially the one on Grahams number: https://youtube/watch?v=XTeJ64KD5cg ~Siteswap juggling: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siteswap ~When is it grammatical to use at all in an English sentence? ~A handful of posts at slatestarcodex, gwern.net lesswrong, and overcomingbias. ~The time I discovered that CFAR exists ~Taylor Malis spoken word poetry: ted/talks/taylor_mali_what_teachers_make ~I once graded a high school science test on which the student defined element as part of an atom which makes up an element, and I noticed I was confused, which led to an extended exploration of formative assessment. agentyduck.blogspot/2012/08/testing-is-bad.html ~What is the main existential threat we should focus on? ~Eliezer doesnt have a memory palace. (I did not think much about mnemonics before learning that.) ~Happifys references page (which was only available to users when last I checked)
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 16:13:36 +0000
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