Does anyone have a favorite one-stop resource for prioritizing / setting / tracking / achieving life goals? A book, say, or website? Something that includes levels like 5 years, 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, as the range of granularity. Getting Things Done covers this briefly, but doesn't really focus on it.

I'm feeling like I have a bewildering & overwhelming variety of life goals that I can't accomplish all of, and trying to figure out what to do on an ad hoc basis is not working very well. Should I work on selling my S2000? Decluttering my physical space? Working out? Analyzing/experimenting with my sleep/energy levels? Maintaining stronger friendships? Put all my extra time into my job? My family?

Posted on Less Wrong. Upvote it unless you are a horrible human being who kills puppies for fun.

(Writing this post does not count as structured procrastination, btw :) )

Wow, just ran into something about the dark side of self-development - a Guru named James Ray who does intense men's groups, had 2 people die and 19 hospitalized after a sweat lodge gone bad a few weeks ago. Lots of details here. MSM even picked it up.

This is why I believe in safety first, not safety third. There is definitely a tough balance between asking people to push themselves for growth vs. pushing too far and getting hurt. But there are ways to negotiate that balance - like not doing physically dangerous stretching of capability, like having staff on hand who are within their capacities and able to closely monitor. It sounds like this was neither - a sweat lodge is dangerous (hyperthermia, loss of water), and obviously the event was not being sufficiently monitored or people would have been removed sooner.

Contrast the sweat lodge with, say fasting. Fasting can be uncomfortable, but it is not going to kill anyone. So it offers an opportunity to push yourself and face issues around food and pleasure-seeking and so forth, safely. When you combine fasting with other demanding physical activities, however, as this guy did, then it can be dangerous.

If this info is accurate, I hope the guy gets convicted of criminal negligence. Sounds like he's a zealot about pushing people:

One man said “yea, I wimped out, I got out on the 5th door…I wasn’t playing full on.” This man had shamed himself, felt like he was letting Ray down. Shawna defended him as maintaining his own limits, speaking up to authority. This man questioned Ray’s authority and took care of himself, Shawna told him. And then he took that in and said “and thank God I did that, because I was well enough to carry the other people out.”
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When Shawna told her husband had happened, he said, “well, I know that you would have questioned Ray” she started crying and said “would I have? Would I have tried to impress him by ‘playing full on’?”
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One of James Ray’s quotes is “your life begins at the end of my comfort zone.

Native American sweat ceremony experts said the way it was done was a recipe for disaster (people came in dehydrated rather than hydrated, the space was air tight using plastic rather than using trees which let some airflow, etc.)

Anyone heard of this? Sounds like yet another weekend workshop (New Warrior Training Adventure), but could be a good one. I saw it mentioned in an interview w/ Peter Diamandis.

During your training you will stand shoulder to shoulder with an immensely rich mix of masculinity, with occupations and ages as wide as masculinity itself. Whether they're corporate executives or high school students, all come to share a common understanding that their lives as men can be empowered with greater focus and direction, and that this personal initiation into manhood is crucial to their full development as men.

Some men come to heal. Some men come to find role models for positive and mature masculinity. Some men come to explore their Leadership abilities and expand their skills. Some men come to make a conscious transition for adolescent life to the life of a man. Some men come to find peace of mind in their transition to elder-hood. All men come because a small voice within them lets them know when it's time.

This part sounds promising:

No weekend workshop is a fix-all. We do not expect the NWTA to "cure" you or "fix" your life. What we do expect is that a crack will be opened in the shield that you have covered yourself with, maybe the shield will break apart completely. The awakening that results from the NWTA can be very powerful ... but the ongoing growth in self-awareness and empowerment that can come about by participating in ongoing men's groups, called Integration Groups, is the most compelling reason that many of us took the NWTA to begin with. After the NWTA you will be invited to participate in an I-Group.

Here's a recent review in the Huffington Post (by someone who drank the kool-aid, so not necessarily objective).

It sounds pretty intense - they have a FAQ entry on "I heard this group ruins marriages" (answer: powerful self-actualization brings change, sometimes this can mean leaving relationships, it can also mean rediscovering passion and connection and deepening relationships. A fair answer). Another is on "What if I decide to leave?" ("Many men experience a time on the weekend when they no longer want to be there.").

via evwhore comes this video which will only be funny if you know something about Landmark, or can pretend you do (like me).

I still think that I've leveled in my internal and external awareness and ability to be present.

( Cut self-development / mindfulness / etc rambling )

One thing I've really gotten into in the past year or so is the idea of cycles. The breathwork in Art of Living was very cycle-like. My daily rhythm is "Work, then relax". I love the Warrior Diet because it fits so well with that cycle - eating is relaxing and makes me sleepy, so not eating during the day helps me be sharp and focused ("fight or flight" mode, sympathetic) while eating at night helps me chill ("rest and relax", parasympathetic).

And there are broader cycles above that - busy weeks and slow weeks. (In theory, I can't remember the last time I had a slow week, if you don't count surgery recovery...although, I guess I would count some of it, after the pain went away at least)

Anyway, I'm not making any kind of mystical statement here, like "the Earth goes in cycles, and so should our lives". Although, that isn't actually a mystical statement b/c our bodies are likely adapted to annual seasons because of the Earth's cycles around the sun...and to daily cycles because of the Earth's spinning. So I need a better example of a mystical statement. Umm..."Circles are holy, therefore cycles are everywhere in our lives", maybe? Anyway, what I'm trying to say is: I'm into cycles because I have found them a useful pattern for looking at my life, and device for managing it. When I flow with cycles, my life works better than when I don't. I don't like relaxing during the day, except on rare occasions, I like getting things done. And I really don't like doing work or making decisions after 10pm, my mind just shuts off. (I notice this b/c Shannon's cycles are different, she is often active and getting things done late at night, which just doesn't work for me)

Although some of my cycles are not standard - ie we work in the office at TSI on Mo/We/Th, which means Tu/Fr I get to go to the gym, run errands, etc, and put in a half-day of work. (which I make up for with long days other times, and evening/weekend work). Which I like a lot better than working 9-5 Mo-Fr. (Weekday daytime is super-useful for errands, doctors appointments, and workouts!)

I don't want to get too specific b/c I think it will be a better experience for others with greater mystery, but a few comments...

So far, it has almost nothing to do directly with women or pickup. It has much more in common with "The Power of Now" or "Art Of Living" (which I blogged about a lot). There's even a tinge of NVC. This is true Inner Game. Which is pretty cool, I think. Rather than teaching routines or openers or crap like the Mystery Method, they are teaching men to have better relationships / do better with women by...becoming enlightened, spiritual, whole people. I love that they are taking this deep primal urge that men have, to succeed with women, and using it to foster personal and spiritual growth. It's brilliant marketing, bringing these lessons to a population who might never encounter skills like mindfulness, yoga, or meditation otherwise, or if they did encounter them, not see a reason to put in the time.

On the other hand, I think there is value in the underlying theory of outer-game style pickup. I think I have learned important things about male-female dynamics from PUA & Deida, which Shannon & I feel have improved our relationship, at least a little bit. And others have said the same - willmagic said learning a little bit of pickup theory changed his relationships with women significantly. Building an artificial structure of interaction around that theory - lame. But adding a good theory to your worldview is a great way to grow. It's one of the easiest ways to change, I think. Becoming more mindful is really hard work, whereas interpreting the world differently due to a new theory happens automatically.

But this is a minor point, really, I'm not dissing AMP (or rather, AMP Day 1, which is all I've experienced), just saying that in my view, Inner Game only is incomplete. But way more important! Would you rather than women are drawn to you b/c you are content, whole, genuine, or because you know how to push their buttons?

Book # 37 on the list I wish I had time to write: "Pickup Theory". (Actually, that's an exaggeration, there are only a few non-fiction books that I want to write. "How to raise a smart, happy kid", "Practices For The Game Of Life", "Common Bullshit: When What Everyone Knows Just Isn't So").

Anyway, I hope & expect AMP will get a bit more into male/female dynamics today & tomorrow...

Days without ranting on LJ: 2
Days without doing anything stupid involving mind-altering substances: 19

suggestions of other metrics are welcome.

looks like I may be doing the Authentic Man Program in 8 days. Fun!

I missed it the first time round, but Eliezer's "Whining-Based Communities" is superb:

Let's be fair to Ayn Rand: There were legitimate messages in Atlas Shrugged that many readers had never heard before, and this lent the book a part of its compelling power over them. The message that it's all right to excel - that it's okay to be, not just good, but better than others - of this the Competitive Conspiracy would approve.

But this is only part of Rand's message, and the other part is the poison pill, a deadlier appeal: It's those looters who don't approve of excellence who are keeping you down. Surely you would be rich and famous and high-status like you deserve if not for them, those unappreciative bastards and their conspiracy of mediocrity.
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Self-handicapping (hat-tip Yvain) is when people who have been made aware of their own incompetence or probable future failure, deliberately impose handicaps on themselves - on the standard model, in order to give themselves an excuse for failure...And this is a need which many belief systems fill - they provide an excuse.

It's the government's fault, that taxes you and suppresses the economy - if it weren't for that, you would be a great entrepreneur...And maybe it's all true. The government does impose taxes and barriers to new businesses...And so what? In other countries there are those with far greater obstacles and less opportunity than you. There are those born with Down's Syndrome. There's not a one of us in this world, even the luckiest, whose path is entirely straight and without obstacles. In this unfair world, the test of your existence is how well you do in this unfair world. You are defined by the particular unfair challenges that you face; and the test of your existence is how well you do with them.

And in that unfair challenge, the art of rationality (if you can find it) is there to help you deal with the horrible unfair challenge and by golly win anyway, not to provide fellow bitter losers to hang out with.

I replied:

One of the greatest benefits I've gotten from (westernized) Buddhism is the idea that a resistance to reality is at the root of much unhappiness.

It seems absurd to me that the human mind so constantly wishes that reality was different - I don't see how it serves our evolutionary needs. But while I don't have an explanation, it is amazing how often I find myself denying reality instead of "Immediate adaptation to the realities of the situation! Followed by winning!". For example, when I encounter bad, unexpected traffic, whining is such a horribly unproductive reaction that it still boggles my mind every time I do it. Yet in many moods (already tired, stressed) it is my default response.

I think many rationalists would get a lot more personal happiness out of working on this single concept, as well as improving strategy for our causes, than many of the narrower and more complex ideas presented here.

Anyway, I would like to get a lot better at acceptance, and at not whining.

The fancy term for lack of willpower is "Akrasia", and here is a thread over at Less Wrong with people's anti-akrasia ideas. For me, anti-akrasia techniques (doing what I want to do, wanting to do what I want to want to do, focus) are the biggest thing I want out of self-development, so I'm interested in this.

I found the top-rated suggestion fascinating, since I do alternate-day calorie restriction, this is basically alternate-day willpower:

Mine is a weird one: I started taking every other day off. Even as deadlines loom, I am committed to doing no work today. I can cook and read and surf the Internet and hang out on Less Wrong and chat with friends and take a nap and do art (but not art for my webcomic), but at all costs I will do no work. Tomorrow, I will do work (in my case, papers for school and art for my webcomic and editing some fiction), and unless something breaks the trend that's been working nicely for a week and a half now, I will do more work than I could have expected to do in three or four days before I started this. (I make exceptions for time-dependent things like class meetings.)

I have a few hypotheses for why this works for me...

I've been reading a bit of quietlion's "Getting Past OK" lately, and I think it has a lot of things relevant to self-improvement for people like me and y'all. One thing it tries to address is resistance to switching perspectives based on what is the truth.

That is, we tend to get attached to our perspectives, even when they are making us sad. When someone offers another perspective, we say "But this one is true!". I think rationalists tend to resist the ideas of positive psychology and CBT and mindfulness and all that because of our attachment to truth.

Now, I am a big fan of truth, and the answer is not to discount it or try to get away from it. But the thing is, there are many true perspectives. And some of them make us happier, and some make us sadder. (That's how I think of it - the book talks about how the perspectives serve or don't serve our highest goals). So clinging to a single perspective based on it being true is not a noble, rational thing. It is a rationalization to resist changing perspectives, because changing perspectives is hard!

As I understand it, this is part of the essence of one of the coaching techniques Shannon is trained in. To get people who are stuck in one perspective to try on several of them - each of which is true, but looks at the situation differently. This helps people feel more free to choose the perspective that best serves them.

Let's take the old glass half-empty vs. glass half-full. Both of these are equally true! Yet they highlight different aspects, and thus cause different emotions and reactions. In some situations (the glass contains medicine you need to stay alive, and you need to constantly worry about where to get more), half-empty may be better. In most situations, focusing on what you have rather than what you lack will make you happier, and so half-full is the perspective that serves you best. But both are true, so the decision and difference has to do with other things besides truth.

Anyway, I don't know if this is new or profound to y'all. The idea that there are multiple perspectives and we can choose the ones which best serve us is one that I've known for awhile. It's this connection to "the truth", and how people will use "the truth" to cling to one perspective that they are attached to (usually because it is the one they are in now and our minds resist perspective change) which is new to me.

Since I really like the truth, I have a hard time seeing it as bad when people cite it as a reason. But I think that part of developing a higher level of emotional maturity is understanding that there are many truths, and that perspective matters. This is not a subjectivist or moral relativist viewpoint, it is simply a fact about human cognition and our subjective mental representations of the objective external world.

(this is kinda ironic, given my post yesterday about the House episode where the guy speaks the truth a lot :) )

K, back to work.

In my dreams, someday in a seastead city I am both faculty and student in a University of Life, combining the full range of self-development techniques from Buddhism and meditation to PUA to Landmark to a Rationality Dojo. A program that helps people grow and develop and find their life's purposes. Not limited to a week-long retreat, but lasting years. Like college, but teaching the Art of Life itself.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of good material out there on using PUA techniques in the context of a long-term relationship, but here are a couple pieces (written for men):

On Maintaining Long-Term Relationships
Self Esteem Is Critical To A Healthy Sexual Relationship

Also, here is a great article on Seduction for Smart People, recounting the experience of a nice introvert self-development blogger and his experiences w/ PUA. It's a great blog, I'm glad I stumbled across it, he also has a good post on How to Quit Drinking Alcohol.

An article reconciling rationality with optimism:

Optimism forms a core part of emotional life expansion. If we wish to live effectively we will have to root out self-defeating pessimism, replacing it with a rational, active form of optimism. Becoming an effective optimist requires more of us than putting on a forced smile and telling ourselves "everything will work out for the best". Living at full capacity—a capacity beyond what most of us imagine possible—asks us to go beyond superficial formulas ("Don’t Worry, Be Happy!") and to understand an intelligent form of optimism. We will only expand the vitality and achievement in our lives if we understand what optimism is, why pessimism holds us back, and why some kinds of optimism restrain us rather than shooting us forward.

Those of us who think of ourselves as rational, clear-headed people, may say "I’m neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I’m a realist." In making such a reasonable-sounding statement we would intend to express an commitment to truth, sound judgment, and rationality. I suggest that we can be both optimists and realists at the same time. The nature of the world means that to be realistic we must normally be optimistic. Optimism and pessimism are more than attitudes toward truth. In saying I am an optimist, I am saying more than that I expect life to get better. That is a purely factual belief. It is either right or wrong. Optimists go beyond holding certain beliefs about the future. They also display certain attitudes. Optimism and pessimism involve not detached estimates of the objective probability of good and bad events in the future, but personal commitments to certain modes of thinking and behaving. By mastering these modes of thinking and adopting optimistic attitudes, we can profoundly influence our thinking, behavior, happiness, and achievement...

Dynamic optimists value rationality. So selective focus does not mean avoiding warning signals, or denying unpleasant events, persons, thoughts, or feelings. It does mean dwelling on the constructive and enjoyable and de-emphasizing pain, difficulty, and frustration. The negative aspects of life can be acknowledged but not fixated upon: Your lower back is sore and and you will seek to remedy the problem; in the meantime you will enjoy the movie. Disagreeable events can be placed in a context of learning. Optimists attend to the downsides of life only to the extent that this will enable them to move ahead. Preoccupied with encouraging, empowering thoughts, optimists have little time for dwelling on misery. Optimists can look at a frustrating event, fully accepting its reality, then choose to interpret the event in a way that leads to action, growth, and mastery. A child’s irresponsible behavior, for example, can give a parent an opportunity to improve his communication skills. While the pessimist focuses on the frustration itself, often excessively and pointlessly, the optimist keeps the event in proportion, enjoys the rest of life, and looks for solutions to the challenge. This last word is a key part of the optimist’s vocabulary: Where the pessimist sees problems, the optimist sees challenges.

Good sleep, good learning, good life by the inventor of SuperMemo, who is a fascinating guy who does a lot of self-experimentation on life optimization.

I particularly liked this idea:

Research shows that 15% of people would classify themselves as "morning type" or lark. Another 20% would call themselves "evening type" or owl. The remaining 65% are indifferent or "mid-range". What is your type? See: Lark-owl test

Few people know that they can easily adapt to a completely different schedule by means of chronotherapy (e.g. by shifting their sleeping hours by 30-45 minutes per day). If you ask a typical owl to go to sleep 30-45 minutes later each day, the owl will initially sleep during the day and soon will find itself going to sleep in the very early evening just to get up before the larks! Surprisingly, even the most committed owl can then comfortably stick to the early waking hours for quite long! There seems to be no natural preference as to the sleeping time of the day!

However, there is a factor that drives people into believing they are of a given sleep-time preference type. This is the length of the circadian cycle and their ability to entrain it to 24 hours. As mentioned earlier, typical circadian period lasts about 25 hours. Those whose cycle is particularly long, tend to go to sleep later each day. They push the limit of morning hours up to the point when their compulsory wake-up time results in unbearable sleepiness. In other words, people will long cycles will tend to work during the night and sleep in the morning as long as it is only possible.

Larks and owls do not differ in their preferred timing of sleep in reference to daytime! The difference comes from the length of the circadian cycle and sensitivity to zeitgebers.

It's hard to know because of the effect of my apnea on sleep, but I think my cycle is a little longer than 24 hours. But that may just be because I spend extra time in bed b/c my sleep quality is so low.

Anyway, for those of you w/o apnea, the article has a lot of good advice about how to optimize your sleep.

I find it amusing that I searched LJ for my past voting rants, and found this post about maybe voting Democrat from 2003, which includes the line:

[1] Doh! Here I was trying to cut back on writing things people would disagree with and be emotional about and I've blown it already...sigh...I'm not surprised :).

It's 5 years later, and I'm still "trying to cut back on writing things people would disagree with and be emotional about" and constantly blowing it :).

Guess it's a deep-seated issue, and maybe I should just accept it instead of wasting energy trying to fight it...

I do consider it an issue, b/c it makes me less effective at reaching my goals. Actually, in a very similar way to the criticism of voting and voting support that I just made. Ranting on LJ lets me blow off steam, yet in a way which is unlikely to have much permanent impact on the world. If I could instead direct that energy into producing more compact, polished, high-quality work for larger audiences - like a book - I think it would have much more impact. But polished, high-quality work is, well, work, whereas rants are fun.

Oh well. At least I know that I rant for fun. Part of what makes me sad about voting is that people think it actually makes a difference, that they are actually doing meaningful political self-determination, and so they check off the little box in their head that says "I want to have influence on my government", and then go about their merry way.

A story from an Anthony Robbins book:

He was bitter and cruel, an alcohol and drug addict who almost killed himself several times. Today he serves a life sentence in prison for murdering a liquor store cashier who "got in his way". He has two sons, born only 11 months apart. One grew up to be "just like dad": a drug addict who lived by stealing and threatening others until he was put in jail for attempted murder. His brother, on the other hand, has a happy marriage, 3 kids, and a job as regional manager for a major company. He has no alcohol or drug addictions.

How could these two young men have turned out so differently, having grown up in almost the same environment? Each were asked privately, unbeknownst to the other: "Why has your life turned out this way?". Surprisingly, each gave the exact same answer:

"What else could I have become, having grown up with a father like that?"

He uses this anecdote to demonstrate "So often we're seduced into believing that events control our lives and that our environment has shaped who we are today. No greater lie was ever told. It's not the events of our lives that shape ups, but our beliefs as to what those events mean."

Not that he is saying that this is all a matter of conscious choice. In just the previous chapter, the book was talking about how conditioning affects our lives. It may be that one brother, at a young age, imitated Dad and got pleasure, while the other imitated Dad and got pain. Both were then swept along by those life events to very different places - because they had different associations with the same idea of Dad-ness.

Still, it seems to me that the belief that we have choice is a powerful and positive thing. A sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of willpower. Perhaps this is one of those cases where believing something false is good for you?

radven pointed me at this, sounds neat and similar to Deida:

Women are a Great Opportunity for Personal Growth

If there is one thing that triggers men’s limiting beliefs (including shame) even more intensely, it’s being on the receiving end of a woman’s upset.

Any situation in which a man cannot respond consciously, firmly & lovingly, pinpoints profound opportunities for personal evolution.

Men’s disconnection with women, it turns out, is simply a bread crumb trail back to where we’re disconnected from ourselves.
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You will have a full day of direct experience with incredibly insightful women who will tell you exactly how they experience you and feel being around you...You will receive precise & in-the-moment feedback in AMP. Our courses are small (12 men), and there is more than a 1:1 ratio between expert facilitators/staff & participants.

AMP’s #1 Guarantee: Every man leaves distinctly aware of subtle behaviors that unknowingly kill attraction with women. These ways of being have often been under your radar for years!

Wow! A more than 1:1 staff ratio, and you get a DVD of your sessions. It's expensive ($2300 for 3 days), but sounds awesome. Maybe I'll take it when I get a chance.

Or maybe Shannon will make me take it ASAP:

"The best thing that's come out of AMP for me--my long distance girlfriend, who I'm completely in love with, had been letting me know in various ways that she didn't feel she could show her full range of emotions around me, and after the course, I realized I hadn't wanted her to. Awhile back she asked me "Can I freak out around you?" and I gave some offhanded answer like "You can freak out as long as you're at least 300 miles away.

Inspired by my AMP weekend (especially the Storming the Masculine exercise), I told her my retroactive answer is "Go for it." I let her know I want to see ALL of her. After that, she was able to put herself out to me with a lot of emotion, from her fears and frustrations to intensely loving, caring, and sensual emotions. I responded from a place of strength and appreciation.

A few days ago, she told me she's been able to fully relax and be herself around me for the first time. Now she and I are closer than ever."

That's one of the few major issues in Shannon & my relationship. If the course could help me with that, it would be huge.