On using Lights

I have been keeping a Google Sheet (their spreadsheet program) that Sebastian Marshall started to help his followers and himself to develop and track habits. It is called Lights. My second full month of lights has been kept and I have added a few new habits to the list. I have also had a 70% or better keeping of the habit since my start. Most of them were things I wasn't particularly good at keeping.

This is last weeks results. It uses a simple "yes/no/halfway" logic and gives a readout of the percentage of times you kept the habit (in the top left portion. . . this was a crazy and lower counted week for me.

Anyway, this has increased the number of times I brushed my teeth, stretched, and edged up slightly the taking of my medicine.

Here is Sebastian's link to the spreadsheet (http://ultraworking.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=dd9f93652172603345875726307ef417&i=108A126A15A1575) and a guide to Lights (http://ultraworking.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=dd9f93652172603345875726307ef417&i=108A126A15A1576).

Ethics in studies

I plan on going out to recruit for my dissertation study tomorrow. It is difficult.

Here's why? Recruiting can be seen as leading to bias. Especially if I actually meet the people I will by studying. The Institutional Review Board at my university sees that as a bad idea, forcing their answers.

If I meet them, I can recruit them and make them more likely to complete the study. If I don't, I can keep out bias.

They won't answer emails without introduction, so my idea is to try to pass out a flyer to the church secretaries. It would be easier if I had large churches to work with, but I have already recruited the largest in the association I am attempting to study.

I could change my sample and population, but that leads to a change in the prospectus and proposal. Since I already have a third of the sample, I am not giving up at this time on my current subjects.

Ethics is good, but sometimes makes it impossible to run into people.

Anti-Tech Revolution chapters 2+3

Kaczynski wrote, in Anti-Tech Revolution (Chapters 2+3), about self-propagating systems. These systems get more complex over time, rather than less complex. They also get more disorderly.

This apparent contradiction, plus the inability to predict the future of a world-system from inside of it, means that there will no Vingean Singularity. I wrote a blog a few years back, where I believed the Singularity was likely. I had not understood Roger Penrose or political philosophy well at the time.

I no longer believe that it will happen, either.

In the chapters (2+3), he also writes that poorly defined goals ruin societies. America had a clear goal for many years during the 20th Century, as the world was defined by the Communism vs. Capitalism struggle.

At the dawn of the Republic, the goal to establish a Republican government separate form Britain was prime. Republican, however, is not clearly defined. As more complexity entered the American government, so has more corruption.

The poor goals of governments doom them.

In America, I have argued before that the complexity of policing laws the Federal Government was to have little role in (according to the Constitution) ruined the viability of the US Government. It is not turned into the Nanny State, a la Snowden's leaks.

The only topic I strongly disagree with Kaczynski on is on page 93, where he asserts that "the Revolutionaries" formed a government which "has lasted until this day." The reason I disagree is that the first US Government (USG) was the Articles of Confederation. It has not lasted.

Kaczynski writes on the fact that Jesus' word has been interpreted differently by people who could not live to Jesus' ideals, such as the admonition against murder.

Feminism is a prime example, where it served a purpose, yet had no clear goals after suffrage. Feminism is falling.

Kaczynski also writes about Luther, Calvin, and the how it has brought us to today's events through the chapters. Today's events seem the logical conclusion of the Princeton Theology.

More updates will come as I read more chapters. I am enjoying the text. Keep in mind, that I received the book for free in exchange for an honest review.

Habits being added too fast

I discovered that my new productivity habit of tracking various things is moving along too fast. I am tapering back a bit. For example, I was putting too many habits in a day where I would be bringing my daughter out. This made it difficult to keep everything completed.

I am slowly adding things, but was not careful of what I was tracking. I'll keep tracking, but it was necessary to slow down in order to keep a completed list. I need to keep the progress going in order to feel pressure, but as habits pass incomplete I will need to be more careful for what I allocate for each day.

Right now, I am have been keeping about two weeks with a day skipped. I should get closer to a month before I add extra tasks, but change habits from day to day.

I am experimenting with my tasks of adding some of Sebastian Marshall's great tasks. I will look over his site in the next few days to prepare for the next couple of weeks, when I add more items to my tracking list.

Habits are daily items that need to be done, to me. By tasks, I mean things on the tracking list.

By habits, I will change daily. By tasks, I will add monthly things to be tracked.

I currently track health, wealth, relationships, fitness, and productivity, yet some of these items are dual-tracked as habits under the tasks.