📝 Alex's scrapbook

        • "Shut up and write" session 1 - 2025-10-27
        • "Shut up and write" session 2 - 2025-11-03
        • 01. To be a boomer
        • 02. Don't be overwhelmed!
        • 03. To be a tpot zoomer
        • 04. It flows, if you let it
        • 05. Hospital cafe
        • 06. Cornflakes
        • 07. Travel day
        • 08. Morning by the pool
        • 09. Hill
        • 10. After "Ship It Week"
        • 11. Balcony
        • 12. Misery
        • 13. I don't know yet
        • 14. Gold prospecting
        • I hear you got some nice feedback today
        • Poetry with Jonathan
        • Writing - not good
        • Writing - Substack
        • Writing - vignettes
        • Cornflakes song 2025-09-09
        • Fade to memory (song) 2025-09-11
        • Golden Line - Lyrics
          • Cliches are banal vs cliches signify profound truths
          • David Foster Wallace (parent page)
          • David Foster Wallace Audio Project
          • Manufacturing Intellect (youtube channel)
          • My DFW Journey
          • Oblivion
          • The End of the Tour
          • What "This is Water" means to me
          • Why do I love DFW's fiction so much?
        • 2025-09-08 song ("I Mind")
        • 2025-09-10 what should I do differently, ChatGPT?
        • Addicted to this new Hayley Williams music video
        • Archiving older things
        • Back to writing daily - quick Berlin retrospective and where I'm at now
        • Era 1 of making music and youtube videos
        • Expressive Mode vs Communicative Mode
        • I never got why DFW wanted to be a fiction writer
        • I want to make good stuff now - 2025-09-04
        • Mansplaining David Foster Wallace 2025-09-02
        • Meta - about "writing more!"
        • Morning Pages
        • Morning pages or something, 2025-09-02
        • Music making log (era 2)
        • On being a naive, untrained writer
        • On fiction (parent page)
        • What could the Alexnaissance look like?
        • What help do I want from Sasha Chapin re writing etc?
        • Writing - zero pressure at all
        • Writing from the POV of "parts"
        • Youtube comments
        • 06. Cornflakes - appendix
        • To be a boomer - appendix
        • Tpot zoomer appendix
        • I am Nuclear Fusion Alex now (2025-05-11)
        • I have a youtube channel now! (2024-11-08)
        • Launching consensus-ism coaching! (2024-06-06)
        • No consensus to write anymore! (2023-11-02)
        • On being "in-group" - tpot vs EA - 2025-06-03
        • Paper journalling is better, actually (2023-07-07)
        • The shame post - 2025-05-30
        • The stories we tell about ourselves (2025-05-13)
        • Why I needed consensus-ism so desperately (2023-07-14)
      • Creating things (parent page)
      • On stuff that I love (parent page)
      • Writing more! (Parent page)
        • Feedback, references
        • Post-it notes from the hippy retreat
        • "Live Near Friends" movement
        • Alex & Simmo group house in London, kick-off page
        • Alex and Simmo group house, parent page
        • Do we make an odd pair? 2025-08-31
        • Estimated London costs
        • Friendship
        • Gathering what people shipped at Ship It Week
        • It's possible that community could obviously be the thing for me (2025-08-28)
        • London vs Oxford for a group house
        • Max aura
        • Misc thoughts on living at the EA Hotel 2025-10-24
        • Monday, third time living at the Effective Altruism hotel (2025-10-20)
        • Nihilism slash dissociation at the hippy retreat
        • Ship It Week log
        • Ship It Week, day 1 retro
        • Ship It Week, day 2 retro
        • Ship It Week, day 3 retro
        • Should I value in-person connection highly? (first pass)
        • Should we do the Fractal Campus accelerator?
        • Tweets about the importance of community
        • What am I doing at Ship It Week? 2025-08-30
        • What if we founded "Fractal Oxford"?
        • What is Circling and why do I like it?
        • What is next for me after living at my mum's? day 1
        • What is Ship It Week? (2025-08-20)
        • What turning 29 means in Chinese culture (according to Gemini)
      • On connecting with people more
            • “'Handle your feelings about the task' is the zeroth item on any todo list"
            • 2025-07-22 meditation open questions
            • Airpods are kind of insidious
            • Ānāpānasati (Anapanasati)
            • Fetters work 2025-08-23
            • Following aliveness
            • Going with the flow, consensus-ism, jesus take the wheel
            • I think I've solved "how do I meditate regularly"?
            • Meditation log
            • My podcast journey
            • Phase 1 of "healing" is complete
            • Sasha Chapin open awareness
            • Should I pay Michael Stroe to help me break aversion?
            • Simone Weil, David Foster Wallace, the Buddha
            • Skillful vs Unskillful Mind
            • The fetters model
            • Tpot, post-rationalism
            • Visual deconstruction via eye gazing and verbal debugging
            • Weakening fetters 4 and 5
            • Sit 000 report
            • Sit 001 report
            • Sit 002 report
            • Sit 003 report
            • Sit 004 report
            • Sit 005 report
            • Sit 006 report
            • Sit 007 report
            • Sit 008 report
            • Sit 009 report
            • Sit 010 report
            • Sit 011 report
            • Switching to open awareness practice 2025-08-08 (sit 010)
          • Increasing the skillfulness of my mind, log 🪵
          • Kensho
          • Meditation parent page
          • Paper notebook
        • Ideal Parent Figure Protocol
        • Ideal Parent Figure Protocol is clearly the thing actually
        • Consensus-ism coaching - what's in it for me? 2025-11-04
        • Consensus-ism index
          • Bowen family systems - flashcards
          • Call with my friend "S" - 2025-06-23
          • Call with my friend "S" - 2025-06-23 1
          • Call with my friend "S" - 2025-06-23 2
          • Current family project open questions
          • Going to family therapy with my mum!
          • Helping family - open questions
          • I saw a family therapist yesterday
          • Is it unethical to take my mum to family therapy?
          • It's my Dad's birthday today
          • Learning about adoption in the UK
          • Learning about ozempic
          • Meta - about the "how can I help my family" project
          • Meta - about the "how can I help my family" project 1
          • Meta - about the "how can I help my family" project 2
          • Meta - about the "how can I help my family" project 3
          • Microsolidarity crew call 2025-06-25
          • Microsolidarity crew call 2025-06-25 1
          • Microsolidarity crew call 2025-06-25 2
          • Microsolidarity crew call 2025-06-25 3
          • NVC flashcards
          • Other people working on the "parents as spiritual practice" thing
          • Starting "Growing Yourself Up - How to Bring Your Best to All of Life's Relationships
          • The ACES study
          • Visual metaphors for the "how can I help my family" project
          • Visual metaphors for the "how can I help my family" project 1
          • Visual metaphors for the "how can I help my family" project 2
          • Visual metaphors for the "how can I help my family" project 3
          • What I currently know about Bowen family systems theory
        • "How can I change how to orient to my family?" (Open Question)
        • "How do I look after my body?"
        • Workout log
            • Model of "Centre for Effective Altruism"
            • Model of FRI
            • Why work for FRI
            • 🧪 Pandemic Action Network
            • Gathering PAN slash global health open questions
            • Global Health flashcards from day 3
            • Global Health flashcards from day 4
            • PAN orientation, day 3
            • PAN top-down model, day 2
            • Twitch stream 2025-06-27 - reading a report and making flashcards
            • Twitch stream 2025-06-27 - reviewing WHO and COVID response flashcards
            • Twitch stream 2025-06-28 - Top-down model of Pandemic Action Network
            • Why work at Pandemic Action Network?
          • Aha, maybe I'm a "professional meta-cognitionist", lol
          • Do I want to do a call with Happier?
          • Excited to be employed as a (self-described) Kegan 4
          • FRI (Parent Page)
          • Gemini Socrates - Outcapped
          • Handling my feelings about doing an FRI work test
          • I am now making money!
          • Money is a solved issue
          • My July 2025 spending
          • Preparing for post-job application feedback call
          • Setting a contractor fee for Outcapped
          • What actually is the FRI role?
          • Working with Rob at Outcapped, parent page
        • "How should I make money?" (Open Question)
        • Making money - log 🪵
        • I'm locking in some deliverables!
        • Imagining that my "open questions" are actually solved by prediction markets of experts, 2025-08-23
        • My relationship with making Youtube videos, 2025-08-23
        • My relationship with Twitter and tweeting, 2025-08-23
        • My relationship with writing on Substack, 2025-08-23
        • Ridiculousness audit 2025-08-23
        • Ridiculousness audits
        • The state of my "network of people working on the same stuff", 2025-08-23
        • The state of my in-person community, 2025-08-23
      • "How can I improve the quality of my lived experience?"
              • Ancient Greece
                • America & Immigration
                • AOC tweet re Andrew Cuomo
                • Israel
                • Israel & Iran (session 1)
                • Israel & Iran (session 2)
                • Israel & Iran (session 3)
                • Israel & Iran (session 4)
              • Day 1 of trying to engage people on twitter via alt account
            • Anki
            • Bottom-up learning
            • Fluency
            • Gemini Deep Research
            • Hermeneutic circle, hermeneutic spiral
            • Lemon tree → lemon curd → lemon pie 🍋
            • My "make flashcards for me" prompt for AI
            • Popperian truth
            • Tacit knowledge videos
            • The Consume-Create Ratio
            • Top-down learning
            • Top-down learning unlocks care (and ego)
            • Why an Obsidian-based website?
            • 01. Writing up my own Socratic dialogues
            • Collection of voice notes
            • Learning Twitch Streams
            • 🟣 Project - "Are visual notes underrated and poorly understood?"
            • Are visual notes underrated and poorly understood?
            • Progressive iteration of visual notes - Pandemic Action Network examples
            • Visual notes are a form of active learning
        • "How can I learn effectively?"
        • AI walk-and-talks are such a great way to learn (2025-06-01)
        • Daily progress updates, streaks
        • I love you Gemini Deep Research
        • Learning to think the Defender of Basic way
        • My learning funnel (2025-05-27)
        • My learning journey
        • New learning era (?) (2025-06-13)
        • Reading fiction to gain non-propositional knowledge
        • The Anki FSRS algorithm made me weep (2025-05-30)
          • July 2025 review
          • Life Reviews
          • Week of 14th July 2025
          • Week of 21st July 2025
          • Example dialogue, 2025-07-02
        • 02. Book list re learning how to think
        • 03. Manifesto - "Why I Should Learn the Socratic Method"
        • 04. Path to becoming Socratic (AKA, what I don't know yet)
        • 05. Learning the Socratic method, part 1 → the rationale (WIP)
        • 06. Learning the Socratic method, part 1 → the rationale
        • 07. Learning the Socratic method, part 2 → the "how"
        • 08. Enneagram 3 thinking sins
        • 09. I'm not good at the elenchus yet (2025-07-06)
        • 10. Why thinking things through is aversive
        • 11. Manifesto - "Time to re-assess full-time vs part-time work"
        • Alex's Obsidian Guide
        • Amusing Ourselves to Death (read 1)
        • Anticipatio Mentis
        • Aporia
        • Ask dumb questions
        • Basic "how to make new pages and stuff" Obsidian guide for Simmo
        • Care is the number 1 thing
        • Circumstantial luck
        • Collection and division
        • Constitutive luck
        • Dealing with overwhelm at work
        • Death Ground
        • Dialectic and Dialogue - Plato's Practice of Philosophical Inquiry (Gonzalez)
        • Digital Garden (Digital Orchard?)
        • Espanso
        • Examples of thinking in public
        • Formal Ontology
        • Formal Ontology - books
        • Gemini Socrates - part-time vs full-time work
        • Gilman Equation
        • How can I operate from a place of uncertainty?
        • How does a Quartz + Obsidian vault differ from a normal Obsidian vault?
        • How modern life keeps us unconscious and un-agentic
        • How much better do I really need to get at thinking?
        • How to construct the elenchus
        • How to make a website like this
        • How to think in a rigorous way
        • How to use the Socratic method with other people
        • I'm overwhelmed! 2025-08-20
        • I'm overwhelmed! 2025-08-28
        • Ignoti nulla cupido
        • ILC (Implicitly Leaving to Chance)
        • Interpretatio Naturae
        • Kegan 3
        • Kegan 4
        • Making a second Obsidian Vault (and retaining your settings, hotkeys, etc)
        • My goals, values as of January 2025
        • Obsidian Guide - Phase 1 - A pretty writing space
        • Obsidian Guide - Phase 2 - A slightly more intentional infrastructure
        • Obsidian Guide - Phase 3 - Small quality of life things
        • Obsidian hotkeys
        • Obsidian Publish vs Obsidian & Quartz
        • Obsidian third-party plugins
        • Old website intro
        • Personal values & "rationality" sprint, v2
        • Prepping for thinking tutor
        • Red-teaming working for Outcapped
        • Resisting the urge to switch to logic or rhetoric
        • RLC (Rejecting Leaving to Chance)
        • RLC as the Kegan 3 to Kegan 4 transition
        • Sasha Chapin post - disagreeableness is a part of sincerity
        • Second round of learning from Ward Farnworth's book on the Socratic method
        • Self-anthropology
        • Setting up Quartz if you already have an Obsidian setup
        • Should I follow some of the prescriptions of Bonesaw?
        • Should I meditate regularly?
        • Simone Weil
        • Superprof Philosophy, Ethics tutor
        • Superprof tutor lesson 1 (The Fundamental Decision)
        • Tactically clever, strategically stupid
        • The case for not associating with the Effective Altruism movement
        • The elenchus
        • The first half of the elenchus
        • The Kegan 3 to Kegan 4 transition
        • The second half of the elenchus
        • The terrible pedagogy of (Michael Kerr's version of) Bowen Family Systems Theory
        • The tyranny of the propositional
        • Theory of change for how writing your own Socratic dialogues "works"
        • Thomas Nagel's 4 types of moral luck
        • Transmissionism
        • Useful concepts and mental models (parent page)
        • Using LLMs
        • Vervaeke's 4 Ps of Knowledge
        • What does it mean to be a professional meta-cognitionist?
        • What is the elenchus?
        • Why am I publishing stuff semi-privately?
        • Why do I dislike my Dad's region of Spain so much?
        • Why doesn't transmissionism work?
        • Work with the garage door up
        • Writing public-facing manifestos, slash showing your thought process, seems powerful
        • Writing to explore ideas
        • Wyrd
            • My model of ORI, 2025-06-23
          • ORI idea - Problems are actually already solved
          • ORI idea - the universe (you're a cell inside an organism)
          • ORI update & open questions, 2025-08-05
        • "What does it mean to be in ORI?" (Open Question)
        • ORI idea - Destigmatise being dumb
        • The streetlight effect
      • "How can I improve my ability to think?" (Parent Page)
      • "Thinking In Public" log 🪵
        • Back to England for Christmas
        • Bangkok, Thailand
        • Barcelona, Spain
        • Era 15 - Asia
        • Era 16 - Back to Europe, Christmas at home
        • Era 17 - "Life Itself" intentional community -> Kensho
        • Era 18 - Divine Period (post-Kensho)
        • Era 19 - Arriving in Toronto
        • Era 20 - Toronto post-Jhourney retreat (the 5 Ms)
        • Era 21 - Making music & youtube videos at my mum's
        • Era 22 - EA Hotel round 2 - Rationality Sprint
        • Era 23 - job hunting at my mum's, family therapy
        • Era 24 - Spain → Oxford → Germany
        • Era 25 - EA Hotel round 3
        • Goenka vipassana meditation retreat in a jungle in Thailand
        • Manila, The Philippines
        • Return to Taipei
        • Taipei, Taiwan
        • Tirana, Albania
        • Aesthetics
        • Daily standups & end-of-day reviews
        • Disagreeableness arc (2025-10-27)
        • Human Design
        • Manifesting Generator
        • Morning pages 1 - on writing more
        • Not wanting to talk
        • On feedback
        • Personality typing systems
        • Suffering is fuel
        • The enneagram personality typing system
        • tpot
        • Twitter profile analysis via an app 2025-10-25
        • Enneagram 3
        • Enneagram 3w4 (The Expert, The Professional)
        • Gist updating
        • I was very lucky to be born into my body
        • I was very lucky to be so lovable
        • I was very lucky to enjoy every life era
        • I was very lucky to have a family who loved me a lot
        • I was very lucky to have a lovely girlfriend from 15 to 26
        • I was very lucky to have been passionate, opinionated and proactive
        • I was very lucky to have had the home life I did
        • I was very lucky to have my life arc
        • I was very lucky to have parents who massively improved upon the parenting they received
        • I was very lucky to know so many lovable people
        • My dad loved Lancias
        • Mythopoesis - "isn't this gaslighting?"
        • Mythopoesis - what and why
        • Mythopoesis (parent page)
        • Mythopoesis → "my dad massively improved on the parenting that he received"
        • Mythopoesis 1 - same life story, different conclusions
        • Mythopoesis approach 2 - a different life story
        • Of course I look dumb to myself in hindsight
        • Parents are x years into y year marathon
        • Should I intentionally tweet better? 2025-10-24
        • Why all the Alex anthropology bro?
        • WIP → Mythopoesis → rewriting the conclusion that "I was a loser in x era because of social anxiety
      • Albums per era
      • Alex anthropology (parent page)
      • My Eras (index)
      • Not caring about external things
      • 🪵 Log per day
    Home

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    3. Improving lived experience

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    1. Healing

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    Meditation, phenomenology

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    Notes

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    “'Handle your feelings about the task' is the zeroth item on any todo list"

    “'Handle your feelings about the task' is the zeroth item on any todo list"

    Nov 06, 20251 min read

    • Useful concepts and mental models (parent page)
    • ☝️ https://x.com/itinerantfog/status/1943343013746380832
    • (Reminding myself that “handling my feelings about a task” is a task, is useful work)
    • I think there’s an inherent bias (at least for me) re: like “only object level deliverables count as work”, “time spent deliberating is time wasted”
      • Also 10. Why thinking things through is aversive
    • but actually, “act” is the 4th of 4 parts of the OODA loop, where “orientation” is actually the most important (”the big O”)


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    • Handling my feelings about doing an FRI work test
    • Useful concepts and mental models (parent page)
    • What does it mean to be a professional meta-cognitionist?

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