I don’t work at Rethink Priorities but I couldn’t resist jumping in with some thoughts as I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on some of these questions recently
Thinking vs. reading. I’ve been playing around with spending 15-60 min sketching out a quick model of what I think of something before starting in on the literature (by no means a consistent thing I do though). I find it can be quite nice and help me ask the right questions early on.
Self-consciousness. Idk if this fits exactly but when I started my research position I tried to have the mindset of, ‘I’ll be pretty bad at this for quite a while’. Then when I made mistakes I could just think, ‘right, as expected. Now let’s figure out how to not do that again’. Not sure how sustainable this is but it felt good to start! In general it seems good to have a mindset of research being nearly impossibly hard. Humans are just barely able to do this thing in a useful way and even at the highest levels academics still make mistakes (most papers have at least some flaws).
Optimal hours of work per day. I tend to work about 4-7 hours per day including meetings and everything. Including only mentally intensive tasks I probably get around 4-5 a day. Sometimes I’m able to get more if I fall into a good rhythm with something. Looking around at estimates (Rescuetime says just ~3 hours per day average of productive work) it seems clear I’m hitting a pretty solid average. I still can’t shake the feeling that everyone else is doing more work. Part of this is because people claim they do much more work. I assume this is mostly exaggeration though because hours worked is used as a signal of status and being a hard worker. But still, it’s hard to shake the feeling.
Learning a new field. I just do a lot of literature review. I tend to search for the big papers and meta-analyses, skim lot’s of them and try to make a map of what the key questions are and what the answers proposed by different authors are for each question (noting citations for each answer). This helps to distill the field I think and serves as something relatively easy to reference. Generally there’s a lot of restructuring that needs to happen as you learn more about a topic area and see that some questions you used were ill-posed or some papers answer somewhat different questions. In short this gets messy, but it seems like a good way to start and sometimes it works quite well for me.
Hard problems. I have a maybe-controversial take that research (even in LT space) is motivated largely by signalling and status games. From this view the advice many gave about talking to people about it sounds good. Then you generate some excitement as you’re able to show someone else you’re smart enough to solve it, or they get excited to share what they know, etc. I think if you had a nice working group on any topic, no matter how boring, everyone would get super excited about it. In general, connecting the solution to a hard problem to social reward is probably going to work well as a motivator by this logic.
Emotional motivators. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what I’m calling ‘incentive landscaping’. The basic idea is that your system 2 has a bunch of things it wants to do (e.g. have impact). Then you can shape your incentive landscape such that your system 1 is also motivated to do the highest impact things. Working for someone who shares your values is the easiest way to do this as then your employer and peers will reward you (either socially or with promotions) for doing things which are impact-oriented. This still won’t be perfectly optimized for impact but it gets you close. Then you can add in some extra motivators like a small group you meet with to talk about progress on some thing which seems badly motivated, or ask others to make your reward conditional on you completing something your system 2 thinks is important. Still early days for me on this though and I think it’s a really hard thing to get right.
Typing speed. At least when I’m doing reflections or broad thinking I often circumvent this by doing a lot of voice notes with Dragon. That way I can type at the speed of thought. It’s never perfect but ~97% of it is readable so it’s good enough. Then if you want to actually have good notes you go through and summarize your long jumble of semi-coherent thoughts into something decent sounding. This has the side of effect of some spaced repetition learning as well!
Tiredness, focus, etc. I’ve had lot’s of ongoing and serious problems with fatigue and have tried many interventions. Certainly caffeine (ideally with l-theanine) is a nice thing to have but tolerance is an issue. Right now what seems to work for me (no idea why) is a greens powder called Athletic Greens. I’m also trying pro/prebiotics which might be helping. Magnesium supplementation also might have helped. A medication I was taking was causing some problems as well and causing me to have some really intense fatigue on occasion (again, probably…). It’s super hard to isolate cause and effect in this area as there are so many potential causes. I’d say it’s worth dropping a lot of money on different supplements and interventions and seeing what helps. If you can consistently increase energy by 5-10% (something I think is definitely on the table for most people), that adds up really quickly in terms of the amount of work you can get done, happiness, etc. Ideally you’d do this by introducing one intervention at a time for 2-4 weeks each. I haven’t had patience for that and am currently just trying a few things at once, then I figure I can cut out one at a time and see what helped. Things I would loosely recommend trying (aside from exercise, sleep, etc): Prebiotics, good multivitamins, checking for food intolerances, checking if any pills you take are having adverse effects. I do also work through tiredness sometimes and find it helpful to do some light exercise (for me, games in VR) to get back some energy. That also works as a decent gauge for whether I’ll be able to push past the tiredness. If playing 10 min of Beatsaber feels like a chore, I probably won’t be able to work. How you rest might also be important. E.g. might need time with little input so your default mode network can do it’s thing. No idea how big of a deal this is but I’ve found going for more walks with just music (or silence) to maybe be helpful, especially in that I get more time for reflection. I’ve also been experimenting with measuring heart rate variability using an app called Welltory. That’s been kind of interesting in terms of raising some new questions though I’m still not sure how I feel about it/how accurate it is for measuring energy levels.
Yeah, I think that perspective on self-consciousness is helpful!
Work hours: I also wonder how much this varies between professions. Maybe that’s worth a quick search and writeup for me at some point. When you go from a field where it’s generally easy to concentrate for a long time every day to a field where it’s generally hard, that may seem disproportionately discouraging when you don’t know about that general difference.
“Try to make a map of what the key questions are and what the answers proposed by different authors are”: Yeah, combining that with Jason’s tips seems fruitful too: When talking to a lot of people, always also ask what those big questions and proposed answers are. More nonobvious obvious advice! :-D
I may try out social incentives and dictation software, but social things are usually draining and sometimes scary for me, so there’d be a tradeoff between the motivation and my energy. And I feel like I think in a particular and particularly useful way while writing but can often not think new thoughts while speaking, but that may be just a matter of practice. We’ll see! And even if it doesn’t work, these questions and answers are not (primarily) for me, and others probably find them brilliantly useful!
I’ve bought some Performance Lab products (following a recommendation from Alex in a private conversation). They have better reviews on Vaga and are a bit cheaper than the Athletic Greens.
“Default mode network”: Interesting! I didn’t know about that.
I don’t work at Rethink Priorities but I couldn’t resist jumping in with some thoughts as I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on some of these questions recently
Thinking vs. reading. I’ve been playing around with spending 15-60 min sketching out a quick model of what I think of something before starting in on the literature (by no means a consistent thing I do though). I find it can be quite nice and help me ask the right questions early on.
Self-consciousness. Idk if this fits exactly but when I started my research position I tried to have the mindset of, ‘I’ll be pretty bad at this for quite a while’. Then when I made mistakes I could just think, ‘right, as expected. Now let’s figure out how to not do that again’. Not sure how sustainable this is but it felt good to start! In general it seems good to have a mindset of research being nearly impossibly hard. Humans are just barely able to do this thing in a useful way and even at the highest levels academics still make mistakes (most papers have at least some flaws).
Optimal hours of work per day. I tend to work about 4-7 hours per day including meetings and everything. Including only mentally intensive tasks I probably get around 4-5 a day. Sometimes I’m able to get more if I fall into a good rhythm with something. Looking around at estimates (Rescuetime says just ~3 hours per day average of productive work) it seems clear I’m hitting a pretty solid average. I still can’t shake the feeling that everyone else is doing more work. Part of this is because people claim they do much more work. I assume this is mostly exaggeration though because hours worked is used as a signal of status and being a hard worker. But still, it’s hard to shake the feeling.
Learning a new field. I just do a lot of literature review. I tend to search for the big papers and meta-analyses, skim lot’s of them and try to make a map of what the key questions are and what the answers proposed by different authors are for each question (noting citations for each answer). This helps to distill the field I think and serves as something relatively easy to reference. Generally there’s a lot of restructuring that needs to happen as you learn more about a topic area and see that some questions you used were ill-posed or some papers answer somewhat different questions. In short this gets messy, but it seems like a good way to start and sometimes it works quite well for me.
Hard problems. I have a maybe-controversial take that research (even in LT space) is motivated largely by signalling and status games. From this view the advice many gave about talking to people about it sounds good. Then you generate some excitement as you’re able to show someone else you’re smart enough to solve it, or they get excited to share what they know, etc. I think if you had a nice working group on any topic, no matter how boring, everyone would get super excited about it. In general, connecting the solution to a hard problem to social reward is probably going to work well as a motivator by this logic.
Emotional motivators. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what I’m calling ‘incentive landscaping’. The basic idea is that your system 2 has a bunch of things it wants to do (e.g. have impact). Then you can shape your incentive landscape such that your system 1 is also motivated to do the highest impact things. Working for someone who shares your values is the easiest way to do this as then your employer and peers will reward you (either socially or with promotions) for doing things which are impact-oriented. This still won’t be perfectly optimized for impact but it gets you close. Then you can add in some extra motivators like a small group you meet with to talk about progress on some thing which seems badly motivated, or ask others to make your reward conditional on you completing something your system 2 thinks is important. Still early days for me on this though and I think it’s a really hard thing to get right.
Typing speed. At least when I’m doing reflections or broad thinking I often circumvent this by doing a lot of voice notes with Dragon. That way I can type at the speed of thought. It’s never perfect but ~97% of it is readable so it’s good enough. Then if you want to actually have good notes you go through and summarize your long jumble of semi-coherent thoughts into something decent sounding. This has the side of effect of some spaced repetition learning as well!
Tiredness, focus, etc. I’ve had lot’s of ongoing and serious problems with fatigue and have tried many interventions. Certainly caffeine (ideally with l-theanine) is a nice thing to have but tolerance is an issue. Right now what seems to work for me (no idea why) is a greens powder called Athletic Greens. I’m also trying pro/prebiotics which might be helping. Magnesium supplementation also might have helped. A medication I was taking was causing some problems as well and causing me to have some really intense fatigue on occasion (again, probably…). It’s super hard to isolate cause and effect in this area as there are so many potential causes. I’d say it’s worth dropping a lot of money on different supplements and interventions and seeing what helps. If you can consistently increase energy by 5-10% (something I think is definitely on the table for most people), that adds up really quickly in terms of the amount of work you can get done, happiness, etc. Ideally you’d do this by introducing one intervention at a time for 2-4 weeks each. I haven’t had patience for that and am currently just trying a few things at once, then I figure I can cut out one at a time and see what helped. Things I would loosely recommend trying (aside from exercise, sleep, etc): Prebiotics, good multivitamins, checking for food intolerances, checking if any pills you take are having adverse effects.
I do also work through tiredness sometimes and find it helpful to do some light exercise (for me, games in VR) to get back some energy. That also works as a decent gauge for whether I’ll be able to push past the tiredness. If playing 10 min of Beatsaber feels like a chore, I probably won’t be able to work.
How you rest might also be important. E.g. might need time with little input so your default mode network can do it’s thing. No idea how big of a deal this is but I’ve found going for more walks with just music (or silence) to maybe be helpful, especially in that I get more time for reflection.
I’ve also been experimenting with measuring heart rate variability using an app called Welltory. That’s been kind of interesting in terms of raising some new questions though I’m still not sure how I feel about it/how accurate it is for measuring energy levels.
Whee! Thank you too!
Yeah, I think that perspective on self-consciousness is helpful!
Work hours: I also wonder how much this varies between professions. Maybe that’s worth a quick search and writeup for me at some point. When you go from a field where it’s generally easy to concentrate for a long time every day to a field where it’s generally hard, that may seem disproportionately discouraging when you don’t know about that general difference.
“Try to make a map of what the key questions are and what the answers proposed by different authors are”: Yeah, combining that with Jason’s tips seems fruitful too: When talking to a lot of people, always also ask what those big questions and proposed answers are. More nonobvious obvious advice! :-D
I may try out social incentives and dictation software, but social things are usually draining and sometimes scary for me, so there’d be a tradeoff between the motivation and my energy. And I feel like I think in a particular and particularly useful way while writing but can often not think new thoughts while speaking, but that may be just a matter of practice. We’ll see! And even if it doesn’t work, these questions and answers are not (primarily) for me, and others probably find them brilliantly useful!
I’ve bought some Performance Lab products (following a recommendation from Alex in a private conversation). They have better reviews on Vaga and are a bit cheaper than the Athletic Greens.
“Default mode network”: Interesting! I didn’t know about that.