I’ve also essentially been doing “Photographing things that are hard to let go of” and finding it useful, as part of a process of moving out of the place I’ve lived for 14 years.
I’ve also been planning to start more consciously using strategies to improve my retention of what I learn, e.g. through flash cards. (This was partly prompted by the book Ultralearning, which I’m halfway through at the moment and am finding useful, though I have various quibbles and points of skepticism as well.) I just read and appreciated the article you linked to, and now plan to try using that Anki app for my flash cards (rather than a mix of Roam and a different Anki app).
Some habits I’ve recently taken up and plan to maintain in 2021:
Do weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews in a spreadsheet I adapted from one someone else made, which was based partly on 8760 Hours
Each day, make a note in a spreadsheet of whether I seemed to have any potential RSI-related symptoms that day.
It currently seems to me that I have no particular need to worry about RSI, but I’ve been sufficiently spooked by other people’s stories with RSI that I want to increase the chances I’d notice warning signs pretty early.
Don’tread things on my phone while in bed
This includes things like not even looking at the preview from email notifications until I’m physically out of bed
The intention with this is to create more of a psychological divide between my sleep environment and thinking cognitively stimulating thoughts (whether about work or just interesting ideas). That’s in turn intended to reduce how often my brain is still “switched on” when I want to get to sleep at night, or when I want get back to sleep when I wake up too early.
This is based on advice I’ve read, though I haven’t really looked into the evidence base for it
(I also started a bunch of other habits related to standard sleep hygiene advice in 2018, including but not limited to regular exercise, and would definitely recommend such things.)
Thanks for these! Added Ultralearning to my Audible wishlist.
Re RSI, a colleague of mine shared the following note when some coworkers were struggling with it. They said they were happy for me to share it here, and I thought you might find it interesting and useful:
“I have the view that a significant component of a lot of RSI is psychosomatic—and I’m quite confident that this was true in my case. That is, the way we relate to and think about it has a significant effect on how much the disease shows.
To give a sense of what I mean here, think about all the people (including me) who had a bunch of coughing/breathlessness symptoms when they were worried about COVID, or consider how much paying attention to sensations in different ways can change their character. The extreme versions of this effect look like people having seizures (this is common enough that I’ve seen it in hospitals more than once) or being hypnotised.
Some reasons I have this view:
When I had a really bad episode of it in 2017, it ended abruptly by my doctor (a hand surgeon) ruling out things they thought might be causing it, and then telling me to take lots of painkillers and just work through it. It disappeared after 2 weeks. That hand surgeon thought that there was a tricky balance between overuse and underuse syndromes, and thought I might have made it worse by not working with it. They did think that at the beginning something happened to my hands, but that I should have started treating them normally earlier than I did.
It seems much more common in EAs than in other knowledge workers (except maybe programmers). I don’t recall ever seeing patients who have it, and none of my med school friends did.
One tricky thing is that it pushes hard against the ‘pay lots of attention to whether you have symptoms, and if you do take them really seriously and don’t do any work’. I don’t really know what to do about that. I do think that it’s probably harmful in some cases to take that attitude, but I’m not sure about the average case.
What to do about this? The main thing I’ve got in mind is for people to keep this as a perspective if they’re experiencing symptoms. You could try noticing what fraction of your symptoms are explained by this type of effect—I’m not sure how effective it would be. It would also point towards treating it more like standard psychosomatic illnesses are treated.
A worry with sharing this thought is that it’s really hard to know what to do with it. But I checked with a few people who all leaned towards thinking it was a good idea to share—so I’m doing so.”
Also, I noticed I was excited when I saw you had left a bunch of comments on my articles, because your comments are always interesting and useful. Thank you for that!
Thanks for sharing that colleague’s thoughts on RSI. That does seem like a useful perspective to keep in mind.
Anecdotally, it did seem to me that I started perceiving very mild/sporadic potential RSI symptoms when I was around a bunch of people who had or were worried about RSI, despite not having perceived symptoms beforehand, and despite no real change around that time in the relevant activities I was doing. And this seemed suspicious to me. (Which is of course not to argue that RSI is always and only psychosomatic.)
I’m currently aiming for something like the following habit:
quickly note recalled perceived symptoms at the end of each day, while bearing in mind that they may be psychosomatic
don’t think any more about RSI unless I start noticing more perceived symptoms
if I do start noticing more perceived symptoms, think more about this, but don’t necessarily worry, and still bear in mind that this could be psychosomatic
But I’m unsure precisely what the best balance to strike is. And your comment made me think I should perhaps be more thoughtful/cautious about publicly saying things that could be interpreted as “I advise that people pay more attention to whether they think they’re experiencing symptoms of RSI”, in case that exacerbates psychosomatic issues for some people.
(Also, nice to hear that you find my comments interesting and useful—thanks for letting me know!)
Re Roam and Anki—Roam Toolkit allows for using spaced repetition in Roam and RemNote is a cool new tool to use the best of both worlds (I had some usability problems with it when I tried it, but they may be solved now).
If you already use Roam and don’t intend to use the phone for Anki (which might be a mistake because it’s fun to use the app), then RoamToolkit is great. RemNote looks more promising if you want to structure your learning and memorization with it, but I haven’t actually used it
Thanks for this list.
I’ve also essentially been doing “Photographing things that are hard to let go of” and finding it useful, as part of a process of moving out of the place I’ve lived for 14 years.
I’ve also been planning to start more consciously using strategies to improve my retention of what I learn, e.g. through flash cards. (This was partly prompted by the book Ultralearning, which I’m halfway through at the moment and am finding useful, though I have various quibbles and points of skepticism as well.) I just read and appreciated the article you linked to, and now plan to try using that Anki app for my flash cards (rather than a mix of Roam and a different Anki app).
Some habits I’ve recently taken up and plan to maintain in 2021:
Do weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews in a spreadsheet I adapted from one someone else made, which was based partly on 8760 Hours
Each day, make a note in a spreadsheet of whether I seemed to have any potential RSI-related symptoms that day.
It currently seems to me that I have no particular need to worry about RSI, but I’ve been sufficiently spooked by other people’s stories with RSI that I want to increase the chances I’d notice warning signs pretty early.
Don’t read things on my phone while in bed
This includes things like not even looking at the preview from email notifications until I’m physically out of bed
The intention with this is to create more of a psychological divide between my sleep environment and thinking cognitively stimulating thoughts (whether about work or just interesting ideas). That’s in turn intended to reduce how often my brain is still “switched on” when I want to get to sleep at night, or when I want get back to sleep when I wake up too early.
This is based on advice I’ve read, though I haven’t really looked into the evidence base for it
(I also started a bunch of other habits related to standard sleep hygiene advice in 2018, including but not limited to regular exercise, and would definitely recommend such things.)
Thanks for these! Added Ultralearning to my Audible wishlist.
Re RSI, a colleague of mine shared the following note when some coworkers were struggling with it. They said they were happy for me to share it here, and I thought you might find it interesting and useful:
“I have the view that a significant component of a lot of RSI is psychosomatic—and I’m quite confident that this was true in my case. That is, the way we relate to and think about it has a significant effect on how much the disease shows.
To give a sense of what I mean here, think about all the people (including me) who had a bunch of coughing/breathlessness symptoms when they were worried about COVID, or consider how much paying attention to sensations in different ways can change their character. The extreme versions of this effect look like people having seizures (this is common enough that I’ve seen it in hospitals more than once) or being hypnotised.
Some reasons I have this view:
When I had a really bad episode of it in 2017, it ended abruptly by my doctor (a hand surgeon) ruling out things they thought might be causing it, and then telling me to take lots of painkillers and just work through it. It disappeared after 2 weeks. That hand surgeon thought that there was a tricky balance between overuse and underuse syndromes, and thought I might have made it worse by not working with it. They did think that at the beginning something happened to my hands, but that I should have started treating them normally earlier than I did.
It seems much more common in EAs than in other knowledge workers (except maybe programmers). I don’t recall ever seeing patients who have it, and none of my med school friends did.
One tricky thing is that it pushes hard against the ‘pay lots of attention to whether you have symptoms, and if you do take them really seriously and don’t do any work’. I don’t really know what to do about that. I do think that it’s probably harmful in some cases to take that attitude, but I’m not sure about the average case.
What to do about this? The main thing I’ve got in mind is for people to keep this as a perspective if they’re experiencing symptoms. You could try noticing what fraction of your symptoms are explained by this type of effect—I’m not sure how effective it would be. It would also point towards treating it more like standard psychosomatic illnesses are treated.
A worry with sharing this thought is that it’s really hard to know what to do with it. But I checked with a few people who all leaned towards thinking it was a good idea to share—so I’m doing so.”
Also, I noticed I was excited when I saw you had left a bunch of comments on my articles, because your comments are always interesting and useful. Thank you for that!
Thanks for sharing that colleague’s thoughts on RSI. That does seem like a useful perspective to keep in mind.
Anecdotally, it did seem to me that I started perceiving very mild/sporadic potential RSI symptoms when I was around a bunch of people who had or were worried about RSI, despite not having perceived symptoms beforehand, and despite no real change around that time in the relevant activities I was doing. And this seemed suspicious to me. (Which is of course not to argue that RSI is always and only psychosomatic.)
I’m currently aiming for something like the following habit:
quickly note recalled perceived symptoms at the end of each day, while bearing in mind that they may be psychosomatic
don’t think any more about RSI unless I start noticing more perceived symptoms
if I do start noticing more perceived symptoms, think more about this, but don’t necessarily worry, and still bear in mind that this could be psychosomatic
But I’m unsure precisely what the best balance to strike is. And your comment made me think I should perhaps be more thoughtful/cautious about publicly saying things that could be interpreted as “I advise that people pay more attention to whether they think they’re experiencing symptoms of RSI”, in case that exacerbates psychosomatic issues for some people.
(Also, nice to hear that you find my comments interesting and useful—thanks for letting me know!)
Re Roam and Anki—Roam Toolkit allows for using spaced repetition in Roam and RemNote is a cool new tool to use the best of both worlds (I had some usability problems with it when I tried it, but they may be solved now).
Would you recommend those over Anki?
If you already use Roam and don’t intend to use the phone for Anki (which might be a mistake because it’s fun to use the app), then RoamToolkit is great. RemNote looks more promising if you want to structure your learning and memorization with it, but I haven’t actually used it