Something new to try: guarding privacy & scheduling criticism

[droqen]

I am a poor planner.

I like to do things out in the open... for reasons which I won't get into.

But @reasonisfun on twitter wrote this article (many years ago) and happened to send it to me (days ago) and, wow, mind blown.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iSRCrE82G4dindJHZ/criticism-scheduling-and-privacy

[droqen]

Note: I think it's interesting that I'm writing about this here in this strange semi-public space. I know a few people keep an eye on the updates of this forum -- because you guys have messaged me at sort of random times and it's been unexpected but also nice. (Hi!)

For the most part this works because the only people who keep an eye on this forum and message me about things are very nice people who I am always happy to get messages from. Nothing even approaches 'criticism'.

[droqen]

This isn't a Close Reading article. So what is it?

[A. Not Close Reading, i.e. not a summary or a pile of random garbage
 B. It's ...? ]

I think I want this to turn out something like my 'a HAIKU games manifesto,' which while I have discovered it is not really all correct anymore, I found that its statement of process-intent was more useful to me than other similar types of prescriptive manifesto-like things, such as (for example) the berlin interpretation which defines a result or goal, but not a process.

[ B. I'd like to describe or evoke a process, an inspirational pile of things that lead to doing things differently. ]

[droqen]

The article itself contains a good manifesto-like summary of what I'd like to be more conscious of in my own processes.

What feels fun and enlivening to share, and what makes you inwardly cringe?

If it makes you inwardly cringe, that's a sign sharing it would interfering with your thinking.

It's not possible to understand our mind fully and have an explicit idea of all the ways that sharing something private can cause problems. A lot of the things I've been talking about happen at the inexplicit or subconscious level.

Discomforts and fears are part of the intuitions you can use to form judgements about what to share and when.

I like the idea of thinking about this 'cringing' as a sign that sharing would "interfere with [my] thinking", and that 'not sharing' in response to this feeling is not an instinctual fear response, but a sort of emotionally-rational, not-fully-understood-and-yet-measured, type of response.

[ B. Before sharing, ask myself: Does the idea of sharing in this way make me cringe? If so, consider how sharing might interfere with my thinking. (Don't worry about other impulses that might be driving the desire to share. Let them go.) What do I want out of sharing this? Can I share it somewhere else that makes me cringe less? Can I get what I want without sharing? ]

[droqen]

Alright, that's all well and good.

What about self-criticism and self-doubt? I wonder if there is a way to apply the lessons I have learned from this article . . . to my own habit of undercutting my ideas. Hmm. It may be totally out of scope but I'm interested in thinking about that a little more.

[droqen]

I like the name of that article. "scheduling criticism..." hmm. there's something clarifying about the idea that  my goal is to get something to a state where i am ready to schedule criticism for it? hmmm