Bursts of productivity account for most of Jason’s output. What’s your distribution of value across days? I thought 80% of my value comes from 50% of my days. Jason and Duncan say 80% of their value comes from 10% of their days.

What can you do to make the burst days happen? Have a generally good mental state. Inspiring environment. Working with motivating collaborators.

Maybe the days that aren’t burst days are still contributing to your effectiveness on the peak days. This could be especially true for writing, where you collect citations and ideas in the background.

Consistent habits are key according to Adrian. Even when you don’t feel particularly inspired or creative, you should still sit down and paint to keep the habit going and continue refining your skill. Duncan tried to write 1k words on a new economics topic every day for a month and learned a huge amount. Consistency is crucial for learning. Don’t let yourself have off-days without a very good reason.

But maybe much of the knowledge that you call upon during your burst is acquired during the burst itself, not stocked up ahead of time. Consensus is no. Carlos points out that having to ask someone else a question can kill your momentum. Duncan thinks his distribution of learning over days is much less peaked than the distribution of legible output. Jason disagrees and claims that a handful of conversations he’s had account for most of the value he’s gotten from all conversations in his life. Blog post value is also heavy-tailed. Everything is heavy-tailed.

My distribution of value across conversations isn’t nearly as skewed. Is it that the harder you try or the more purposeful you try to be in a conversation, the more you get out of it? Jason thinks it’s actually an effect of the person you’re talking with. Some conversational partners can change your life in just a twenty minute open-ended chat. Correlated with seniority in the field and well-roundedness. One hour talking with Charles Jones was more productive than an arbitrary amount of talking with peers. Maybe senior people’s time is at a premium, which forces them to push their bit rates upward (MMK’s hypothesis).

Is the best effectiveness strategy to become like Charles Jones? He can query himself whenever he wants. He has taste in project ideas. See Gavin Leech’s claim that one main benefit of a PhD is labelled training data to train your research taste (by observing your advisor). Get fast at writing to become Jones? Learn a lot to become Jones? Duncan claims the fastest way to learn is to produce. The best ideas come to you at the same time as you’re executing.

How many days do you throw into the void? Use Toggl to track your time minute by minute. Notice when you’re getting distracted. The lower tech method is to time journal at the end of the day. Takes only two minutes a day.

My top effectiveness recommendation: journal. Recognize when you’re off track. Also helps you to reset your context the next time you come back to work. Maybe your mental health takes a hit when you realize you aren’t spending your time on what you wanted to spend it on. Jason thinks gratitude journaling has low effect size.

Adrian: tell your goals to your best friend and chat with them at the end of every day. They should be edgy and point out when you aren’t making progress. Bonus—this can help you get closer with your friend.

Set alarms for every time sensitive task on your phone. Every item always goes in the same pocket. Phone always in the right pocket, wallet in the left, etc. Do the cost-benefit analysis on buying air tags for all your easily lost stuff.

Elias: enhance your willpower with hype music. You can also play music as a reward after you complete your task. Shard theory: train yourself to be in a context where you do shit. If you’re in an environment where you get rewarded for doing stuff, you will be effective in that environment. Jason: Maintain the hygiene of your work spaces religiously. But Elias thinks you’re more likely to go to the library if you know you won’t be totally shut off from fun stuff (his phone). Maybe being happier increases your willpower across the board. How to get happier?

Jason’s motto: Action precedes motivation! When you notice akrasia striking, use your inner sim to predict what you would do if you were hyper motivated. Play the mind movie of yourself working real hard, get pumped about it, and do it. Realize when you’re opening YouTube or crawling into bed. Call a friend to rescue yourself from a laziness death spiral.

Filip: when you feel stuck, maybe start with an easy task. Respond to your mail, then build on your momentum. Other people will get complacent after doing the easy thing and give themselves permission to slack after.

Make a daily to-do list where the first item is “make to-do list,” then strike it off. Now you’ve done at least one thing.

Action precedes motivation! Tell yourself that you will like doing the thing you want to do. Procrastination as a side-effect of unhappiness. Be honest with yourself that you’re doing what you’re doing in an effort to make yourself more happy. Corollary—you should optimize your procrastination to improve your mental state.

Duncan’s time-sink is editing Wikipedia. LOL. Don’t spend your time on things you won’t retrospectively endorse (easier said than done). How can you rest without feeling bad about not being productive? Alina: do things with friends so you can tell yourself you’re doing it for the sake of the relationship. Plan out your fun and recreation. Time limit it. Adopt a Sabbath ritual. Leisure time doesn’t come out of the same mental bank account as work time. In Britain during WW2, they made workers work on Sunday, and total weekly output per worker went down.

If you don’t have time to respond to a message, send a short message saying “Busy now, respond later.” Clear your tabs. Inbox zero by the end of every day. Everything gets archived or responded. Nothing may pile up. Block unnecessary messages. If you’ve deleted a newsletter four times in a row, cancel it. Make the inbox zero ritual part of your gratitude journalling. Use Beeper. Non-responses typically happen for a reason. Pomodoro your responses. Set a two minute timer, and when it runs out, you have to click send. MMK: Is there an app that binds you to send some message after $t$ seconds? Someone should create this…

Most of my non-responses happen when I feel anxiety about my correspondent and fear that a sub-standard response will cause me to lose standing in their eyes. This is counterproductive, but I haven’t figured out how to solve it.

Use stormy, an AI that bullies you into doing your work. Don’t do illicit study drugs if you want to work for the government someday. Shockingly, nobody present for the discussion had done Adderall. But one third of Massachusetts college students reported having used Adderall in the last year!! Duncan estimates a one in four thousand chance of getting caught per use of Adderall based on a 1960s study FWIW. Jason: temperance is good! The vibes of drug use are suss. There are almost certainly side effects you can’t detect, and your mental state becomes more precarious. Maybe consider nicotine for cognitive enhancement though. See Gwern article.