Self-Control Do's and Don'ts by the Ultralearner Scott Young

James Clear : Every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you want to become.

DON’T :

Avoid these three self-control strategies:

• suppressing thoughts about temptations

     • if you suppress thoughts then they’ll come back stronger than before (in ironic rebound)

• resisting temptations

    • this takes a lot of effort and it’s ineffective

• training self-control as a muscle

     • there’s little transfer between different self-control tasks

     • you need to develop a complex skill set to master self-control

BELIEFS :

Watch out for the “limited” mindset:

·        Your beliefs about how self-control works become a self-fulfilling prophecy

o   if you think your willpower is limited, you’ll feel depleted after exercising self-control

o   if you believe your willpower is unlimited, you’ll feel energized by self-control tasks

·        you can gradually change your beliefs to become more unlimited (thus strengthen your actual willpower) by adopting effortless self-control strategies described in the rest of this guide

 

AVOID EXERCISING WILLPOWER IF YOU CAN

• choose ‘want-to’ goals (for which you have intrinsic motivations) rather than ‘have-to’ goals (for which you have extrinsic motivations)

• if you can’t choose want-to goals, increase your want-to motivation for the thing you have to do

• find activities that promote your goals and which are enjoyable at the same time

• if you can’t find enjoyable goal-promoting activities,

• look for aspects within the activities you have to do which are immediately rewarding,

• use temptation bundling (pairing an activity you have to do with an indulgence),

• or decrease the value of indulgence with commitment contracts (agreeing to incur costs if you fail – Eg. Donation to a group you dislike)

• be careful not to self-reward with indulgence and don’t rely on temptation bundling and commitment contracts onlyand team focused.

 

MANAGE SELF-CONTROL CONFLICTS

• broad-bracketing

• think of your choice (whether to indulge or not) not as a one-shot decision, but as a sequence of habitual decisions;

• always ask yourself: what will be the consequences if I indulge every time?

• psychological connectedness (use self-awareness to manage your sense of belonging – it helps!)

    • realize that in the future you likely won’t change much – you’ll

be equally tempted to indulge as you’re now and you won’t have

more willpower or resources to deal with temptations than you

have now

    • ask yourself – what would my older self ask me to do better now?

• adjusting your identity

    • identify yourself with the self-image of a strong-willed person

    • choose your identity based on your goals – if you want to become a runner, start thinking like one

Use Self-Affirmations!

 

DECISION MAKING

• whenever making an important decision, get yourself into a high-level (=abstract) construal by asking yourself a series of ‘why’ questions

    • for instance, if you want to lose weight, ask yourself: Why do I want to lose weight?

    • if your answer is ‘to be more attractive’, turn it into another ‘why’ question: Why do I want to be attractive?

    • Do this until you’ve connected to your deepest values (because it gives me great joy, because I deeply value my life, etc.)

• whenever you need to plan how to achieve your goals, you need to get into a low-level (=concrete) construal

• if you have a tendency for harsh self-criticism, practice mindful construal

Practice Mindfulness Regularly!

MANAGE CRAVINGS

• when you’re consuming food, alcohol or cigarettes, remove all distractions

    • don’t watch TV or YouTube and don’t listen to music

    • don’t check social media

    • don’t speak on the phone or send messages

• use additional techniques to strengthen your consumption memory:

    • before eating, drinking and smoking, remind yourself how much you’ve already consumed on that day (with pictures taken of the previous meals/drinks/cigarettes)

    • discard food wrappers at the end of the day rather than straight after each meal, get rid of cigarette packs and bottles at the end of the week or month

• when you’re not consuming food, alcohol or cigarettes, distract yourself away from cravings by

    • visualization (=imagining pictures or scents)

    • visual noise

    • counting

    • smelling pleasant odors

LIFESTYLE

• for optimal self-control, avoid foods with high sugar content

• instead, maintain a stable level of glucose in your blood by eating foods with a low glycemic index

• take plenty of exercise – this will improve glucose and oxygen supply to your brain and boost the volume of your frontal lobes (which are responsible for self-control)

• to preserve and restore self-control, maintain regular sleep habits and take naps when you’re down on energy

For a change, a really crappy blog post by the master himself - what I learned about getting in shape. I'll spare you the time and the link and the torture. Not worth reading. All I got:

Peter Attia - Outlive - concept of the Centenarian Decathlon

Spark by John Ratey - exercise is really about taking care of the brain. So do it!

Daniel Lieberman - The Story of the Human Body - impacted wisdom teeth are due to insufficient chewy food in childhood.

And, I didn't know about the NCSA's Essentials of Personal Training. Might look that one up

The Father of Criminal Profiling

Source	Incendiary: the psychiatrist, the mad bomber and the invention of criminal profiling
Author	Michael Cannell
Primary Subject	George Metesky  - the Mad Bomber
Cause	Paranoid schizophrenia: A chronic disorder of insidious development, characterized by persistent, unalterable, systematized, logically constructed delusions. People suffering from this disorder often have a cool and distant demeanor. They may hear demonic voices calling them to action or see things that are not real. They may believe other people are controlling them or plotting against them. They are typically reclusive, anti-social and consumed with hatred for their imagined enemies. For all their derangement, they are capable of acting quite normally until, inevitably, some aspect of their delusions enters into their conversation. The paranoic is the world's champion grudge-holder. We all get mad at other people and organizations sometimes. But, with most of us, the anger evaporates eventually. The paranoic's anger doesn't.
Quotes (Dr. Brussel)	“I’ve never fired my .32 Iver Johnson at anyone," he would say. “But it’s never far from reach while I attend patients in my mid-Manhattan office or on outside calls. And. believe me, if I ever need to shoot—l will.”
Trivia	GM signed letters to the press "FP" - Fair Play. He has a patent for a solenoid pump Dr. B used to teach a course at Yeshiva University. Carried a revolver in his briefcase Joe Petrosino "the Dago" - Italian born NY cop - pioneer in fight against organized crime. Tapped by none other than Teddy Roosevelt (NY Police Commissioner). "Needed only one glance at the wounds of the victim to know what inspired the murder and what branch of the mafia was responsible" Deductions from color of blast smoke: black - dynamite; yellow - nitroglycerin; blue - gunpowder GM used shellac to make the bomb waterproof so it could be hidden in a toilet. "Line coupling" vs "well coupling" - jargon was a clue to the resident county of the bomber. "Brooklyn (in Waterbury, CT) was a long way from the Connecticut of well-heeled commuters and country roads lined with picturesque stone walls. " Thomas Harris (creator of Hannibal Lector) got ideas from interviewing John Douglas at Quantico (FBI, BSU)
Dr. B's Lifespan	1905 - Oct 23, 1982 (77 years)
Other Books by Dr. Brussel	Casebook of a Crime Psychologist Instant Shrink : Become an Expert Psychiatrist in 10 Easy Lessons Just Murder, Darling (Kills wife's lover and frames her for it)
Dr. B's Hobbies	Composing crossword puzzles, playing electric organ and drums

 

Dr. James A. Brussel holding his book, "Casebook of a Crime Psychologist"

Joe Petrosino : Pioneer in NY's fight against organized crime

Teddy Roosevelt : NY Police Commissioner who tapped Joe Petrosino for a big position in the NYPD

Dr. Egas Moniz, first Portugeese winner of the Nobel Prize, "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy (lobotomy) in certain psychoses". Dr. Brussel had to recommend lobotomies in his line of work.

Rant : How Does This Guy Do It?

This is one of the most unhelpful pages I've ever seen and yet this guy seems to have signed up all kinds of affiliates to put ads on his page.

Go figure.

http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/03/moving-some-posts-from-one-blog-to.html

Professor Pimsleur's 16 Tricks for Language Learning Greatness

#	Tip	In Practice
1	Think sounds, not letters	Speak, don't read :)
2	Never look at the letter 'r'	Because, then, English takes over
3	The correct learning sequence	Listen, get the sound down, then say it
4	The longer a word, the harder	Break it down into pieces
5	Shoot all problems on sight	Fix it right away! As soon as you find out
6	Start from the end	For long words that is
7	Work with a model	If you're learning English, you need to compare yourself with the BBC
8	Every sound is important
9	Don't practice single sounds
10	Think in sound-clusters
11	Mastering a difficult sound
12	Practice whole phrases,
13	If you block, stop	Take a break and come back
14	Difficult sounds in each language
15	Invite a friend to make fun of you
16	When to say 'the hell with it'	Be realistic - if you're 18+, you're probably stuck with your accent :)

 

Smelling the Rat : Magnus Carlsen Vs Hans Niemann

Papa : I had the impression that he wasn't tense or fully concentrating on the game in critical positions.

The God of Blogging : Chris Garrett

OMG! I've been doing this twenty years and, reading his masterpiece, I feel like a noob.

Chris Garrett - ProBlogger

I'm reminded of what Charles Townes said about Ted Maiman's paper on the laser : "the most important per word of any of the wonderful papers" that Nature had published in it's 100+ years.

1. Be granular - don't spread a post over multiple subjects!
2. Be consistent in blogging frequency.
3. Keep paragraphs short. Blog readers have short attention spans😊
4. What should you blog about? Something that the big guns aren't blogging about. In short, don't take on Gizmodo😊
5. You're better off with five blogs addressing five topics than with a single all-in-one blog
6. Quoting someone? Put the quote within a box and see your pageviews take off 😊

Shein Means?.... That's Right! Made in Xinjiang

All kinds of people are crying hoarse about how badly them Uyghurs in China's west are being beaten up. Now, when you hear about how people are buying trendy clothes dirt cheap, you wonder what kind of wages the workers making these clothes are being paid. Ugh.

To what lengths did Ava Grand go to fight back? She makes clothes out of the bags that Shein clothes come wrapped in! Don't take my word for it😊

How cheap? The high-end jeans cost $28 at Shein!

You can order 10 trendy pieces for $2 each, and you'll end up with 10 additional plastic (these are sturdy bags that have zippers!) in your house. Now picture three babes doing a Shein haul party and unboxing and then finding the bags piling up and starting to think about how many bags Shein is dumping in the environment?

Turns out Gen Zers do place a premium on sustainability - at least according to the WSJ.

In a Nutshell : Ronald Pelton, KGB Mole

Full Name	Ronald Willam Pelton
Agency	NSA
Operation Compromised	Ivy Bells (tapping of Soviet undersea cables)
Born	Nov 18, 1940
Birthplace	Benton Harbor, MI
Pre-crime stressor(s)	Increasing homeowner's taxes, home repair costs (burden of 4 children, 1979 salary of $24.5k/yr)
Handler	Vitaly Yurchenko
Collaboration session duration	Up to eight hours
Payoff	$40,000
Sentence	3x Life, $100 fine
Time served	30 years
How caught	Soviet handler defected to USA
Evidence	Cooperating witness, tape recording, confession
Incarceration facility	Allenwood, PA. Medium security

 

When I Grow Up

I want to be just like Greg Robinson. You see all kinds of people posting how great he is on LinkedIn. Did any of them take the time to check out his profile? See what I'm talking about? He has no time for that - he has something really important to do.

Now, I have to shamefully admit, when I listened to the WSJ podcast interview, that I did not expect him to be a black man. When he said, "answer not just the words of the question but the intent of the question," I detected a bit of an accent, but I was pleasantly stunned by the picture, when I eventually saw it.

Well then, what are these ten new technologies we shot up into space a few months ago?

1. Infrared detector hybrids - if it doesn't sound new enough to me, it's because I don't know enough😊
2. Micro-shutters on the scale of the human hair. Nothing before JWST can observe up to 100 objects simultaneously spectroscopically at high-resolution.
3. A five-layer sun-shield (with space-age coatings) the size of a tennis court. This one failing to unfurl was one of the 344 single-points of failure (a Mars mission has about 70-85 SPFs)
4. Wavefront Sensing and Control : Space-age math that controls the instruments (mirrors, et al) to get the image into focus.
5. A backplane (that holds everything together) that achieves mechanical steadiness down to 32 nanometers while being cooled to -240°C! Northrop Grumman did the graphite composites needed.
6. Cryogenic mirrors
7. Cryogenic imaging IC - looks like the SIDECAR was also used on the Hubble. Hey, go with what works. Can't go wrong there 😊
8. A three-stage cryocooler that ensures the low temperature of operation (kills the noise that the detector electronics is naturally prone to) from a distance of meters, while achieving a very low vibration spec. You wonder why Hubble can work for 30 years without complaining and why the JWST was only expected to do five years (the Europeans did such a good job with delivering and parking the beast at it's final home that there's enough fuel left to operate for an additional five years. The solar panels provide 2 kW of power. But, I guess there's some tolerance built in to things, but they just expect stuff to fail and fail till you no longer get the quality you need out of the thing - and so you have a finite life - not like the Hubble where you can send up a crew in a shuttle to do maintenance. I wonder if some people on death row can volunteer for a glorious death mission - go knowing you'll never come back - and take a giant leap for mankind. Sounds like something a Japanese astronaut with Samurai roots might try. Commit some white collar crime and decide to redeem yourself with a glorious death. What's more glorious than serving humanity on a suicide mission like servicing the Webb?

What's the opposite of the baker's dozen? The NASA ten - hey, they only have eight listed on their page. Don't look at me funny.

FYI, the 200 inch telescope in Mt. Palomar's Hale Observatory is considered one of the great achievements of mankind. The glass for the mirror took six years to grind. And they got that done in 1948! That's all we had till Hubble came along in 1993 😊 Hubble isn't bigger, just better - being 50 years more advanced. It only has an 95 inch mirror.

Now, coming to the man who rescued the project. A new term : schedule efficiency : If it's 50%, that means, for each day the project is ongoing, it's end date moves out by a day 😊 Sound familiar?

Given that the Manhattan project cost $2b and the JWST cost $10b all told, in 2022, projected backwards, with inflation, that's $500m in 1940 dollars.. Is it more complicated than the first nuke? Probably. I'd say - given that very smart people worked for about 30 years on it (total involvement, about 20k people!)

I'm very mission, organization and team focused.

Greg took over the project in 2018 (already 11 years behind schedule for launch). 

I thought it was critically important to put everything on the table and answer, not just the words of the question, but the intention of the question. And to give, not just data, but information.

He is the kind of leader who will take you out to coffee and, when you're done, you will know exactly what to do and he will not have told you what he wants you to do.

One person can make a difference and, oftentimes, it's not the person you expect, and that's the person you want.

Incremental progress over many years leads to exponential progress.

A Woman (Girl) Did This - Always The Ones You Least Expect

If you read this, or listened to it in the audiobook, would you guess it was a woman (19 year old)?

They smashed a hole through a locked closet door, and found the passport, cash, credit card and grandmother's jewelry I had hidden inside. They took my camera, my iPod, an old laptop, and my external backup drive filled with photos, journals... my entire life. They found my birth certificate and social security card, which I believe they photocopied - using the printer/copier I kindly left out for my guests’ use. They rifled through all my drawers, wore my shoes and clothes, and left my clothing crumpled up in a pile of wet, mildewing towels on the closet floor. They found my coupons for Bed Bath & Beyond and used the discount, along with my Mastercard, to shop online.  Despite the heat wave, they used my fireplace and multiple Duraflame logs to reduce mounds of stuff (my stuff??) to ash – including, I believe, the missing set of guest sheets I left carefully folded for their comfort. Yet they were stupid and careless enough to leave the flue closed; dirty gray ash now covered every surface inside.

https://vator.tv/news/2011-07-29-airbnb-customer-service-fail-the-story-of-ej

EJ is Emily. And the perpetrator? Faith Clifton, who was doing meth, I believe..