Daily Shelves

If I were to create my own DiSSS protocol for mastery, the most important thing would be the question “Where am I going?” - in my parlance the question is what’s the next shelf I can rest my practice on?

Record Keeping - stable
Fixed Meditation - I have no idea
Bodyweights - a weekly schedule where I transition from push/pull and bodyweight tabatas
Writing - being able to easily write or edit work writing every day. Or maybe one article per week.

Negativity in Task Reductionism

My initial view of this project was to collect data on habits, and later on self development and mastery. From the data I was hoping that rules and maxims would emerge. Mind you I don’t exactly know the exact difference between rules, laws, maxims, and theorems, etc… but I feel that they have started to emerge.

One recent one is what I’m calling the Law of Task Reductionism.

And I’ll define it like this:

If a complex task is not broken down into its component parts, failure becomes a negative emotional reflection on one’s character.

The corollary to this law is that :

the chances of failure (defined as failure in improving the skill, loss of efficiency, and as abandoning the endeavor in general) increase substantially

Per Timothy Ferriss’ DiSSS protocol, the reverse seems to be true. That when complex tasks are broken down, individual aspects can be improved upon with relative ease, and “mission success” and efficiency increase substantially.

I’ve found this to be the case in my current cycle of improving my writing. When faced with a writing task, things can get emotional. I fumble, efficiency is lost I get nervous, and though I’ll get the task done, it comes with it a large amount of questioning as to my abilities personally and needless expenditure of emotional energy. But when broken down, I’m surprised by the amount of progress I make in relatively small amounts of time.

Character attacks are a critical problem in this type of self help. You push writing, and people mention how much weight you’ve gained. The habit mania - the urge to do multiple tasks all at once (which has little chance of success) increases. And with it comes cycles of worthlessness and other emotions that prevent stability of practice.

When a task is just a thing, not a reflection of who you are, emotions subside and you’re able to progress calmly and steadily.

Which brings me to my Maxim of Character Reductionism:

Do not associate tasks you approach for self improvement as a reflection of your character. This disassociation prevents habit mania and promotes rapid improvement.

Widgets and an Expanded Plan of Habit Formation Towards Mastery

Habits are a pain, Mastery of a skill is even more of a pain. But doing this for several habits? That’s a war on multiple fronts.

I’ve had a year’s worth of habit formation under my belt - it’s not even a problem to form one anymore. When I think about pushing this project for the future, I think about a smooth graph of habits working in harmony with one another. What’s this look like?

Imagine an entire plan for a year comprised of superhabit formation, growth cycles smoothly kicking in, ratcheting up, switching of to other skills, a year that’s a symphony of perfectly progressed advancement in all skills. Harmony is achieved by pressing just enough, but not too much to interfere with the continual upkeep of other skills.

What I feel hasn’t been discussed are small protocols that kick in at those breaking points - I’ll call them WIDGETS for now, after the small third party programs on websites or computers that kick in when you need them.

And that’s exactly what I want them to do - a small kick when the system needs it that then go away once their mission is complete.

What are some examples?

-Timothy Ferriss’ DiSSS protocol to push skill mastery
-Protocols for absorption and flow states for progression
-Flow and ritual protocols for regimentation, specifically to avoid worrying and thus leaching willpower when I’m not working
-Having absorptive habits or hobbies to help in not obsessing about pushing skills when not working
-A litany of past successes in order to push past HABIT MANIA - the feeling of needing to do everything at once because everything needed to be in place yesterday
-Other protocols for specifically getting past the emotional aspects of breaking points - like Vipassana to push past depression or that drowning feeling
-Taking weekends off in order to preserve sanity

I think this might be different from a previous idea I had - nested habits . Nested habits are protocols within an already established habit, while widgets would be auxiliary protocols to make sure the whole program (across all habits) is moving as smoothly as possible. So that may or may not include skill mastery pushes.