Ok, I figured out how this is supposed to work.

First of all, the biological experiments were a success. I increased the dose of shrimp without negative adverse consequence and achieved an even higher level of vitality. I’m unsure whether I’m strong enough for e.g. weightlifting, but it should be enough to do my dayjob without fatigue crashing afterwards.

Onwards to the koans. The proto-koan point consciousness method is great, but nothing static will work for long. In my previous post I realized I needed to join it with the hand koans in a circular activation pattern.

I also realized that the proto-koan point method could be applied to the heart locus, with similar results, but for morale. Cycling between the consciousness point and the heart point reduced the stagnation/adjustment problem.

This was good, but it wasn’t quite enough. I had mental focus and well-being, but needed something else. The answer was a third point in the proto-koan cycle, at the groin locus. That gave me puissance, will to dominate, whatever you want to call it.

So, the full proto-koan method applies the point method first to the groin, then the heart, then the head (consciousness), then repeats.

Then the hand koans are available for channeling overmind activity as necessary, lengthening the lizard’s mandala circle / minotaur maze.

The proto koan structure has taken a lot of the load off the hand koans, creating some overlap, so I expect my hand koans to evolve into a more specialized role.

I’m pretty happy with the arrangement. I’ve got lots of work to do, and not much more to say, so I’ll leave it at that.

EDIT:

I was wrong. The hand koans are a pathetic distraction. Cycling the three proto-koans is all I need. Verbal thought is superfluous.

EDIT:

It’s worth mentioning now that linking the proto koans to breathing and tongues makes it even more powerful. I think this is my stopping point.

I think this works because there are three components to a man: balls, heart and mind. The proto-koan sequence simply reinforces each of these in turn. This results in manly right action.

To add in tongues, I envision the tongues energy somehow sinking into the activated point. I usually focus on a point for one or two breaths before moving on.

For the first time, I pronounce myself satisfied with a meditation system, even after testing it to fatigue-induced work-ethic failure. And, without any expectation of a better performance next time!

My stated goal was to find a meditation that would permit me to maintain right action up to the point of unconsciousness. This was manifestly unrealistic, given that mental faculties are a gradient. At times, and in the absence of urgent business, rest is a necessity.

However, I am well satisfied to find that my new work-ethic failure point occurs at a fatigue level where both standing and maintaining meditation are problematic. I judge this to be a success. More importantly, even once work ethic fails, I am still able to avoid wrong action. It is much more important to guarantee recovery by avoiding harm than to squeeze an extra few drops of work from a dry stone – particularly now that I am no no danger of perpetual drought.

** solving overeating with gore porn

My latest day of enforced rest is due to the last wrinkle in my stable baseline regimen, the overeating problem. My condition renders me not only absurdly oversensitive to overeating, but also strongly inclined towards it, probably due to reduced ability to extract nutrients from food.

I practice intermittent fasting starting at 2-3pm daily, for both food and smoking, because otherwise my sleep suffers greatly. Sunset occurs around 7:30, meaning I need to avoid eating for the last 4-5 hours of daylight in order to sleep on a night cycle.

I was already limiting portion size and eating every meal cold, but still would make occasional slipups. Since each error costs a day or two of fatigue and interrupted Circadian rhythm, these errors easily compound.

I determined that the eating trance was to blame, which is itself an adaptation to the evolutionary unavailability of refrigeration. Deciding to counter one monkey adaptation with another, I chained a habit to the end of my meals. After each plate, I would first look at a single image gore porn, then set a timer for one hour. After that timer elapsed, I could eat another plate. This worked admirably, even at full fatigue. Should I be tempted to indulge outside permitted hours, the simple threat of a gore porn dose proved sufficient.

FYI, gore porn refers not to sexual but to gory content. It silences hunger by activating disease and danger taboos. Goreyporn.tumblr.com and bestgore.com seem effective. The brutal, direct, and personally costly nature of this solution appeals to my MT nature. I do pride myself on running the sort of advice blog you won’t find anywhere else.

** meditation for sleep onset

The past few days have also confirmed that the new meditation system is a solution to my previous troubles with bedtime observance and sleep onset. The first positive sign was that with this meditation system I could simply sit and do nothing indefinitely without impatience. Work, rather than idle indifference, was ever my objective; nevertheless this boded well.

I next found that the continual mind-clearing, emotion-centering, and resolve/pride/thumos increasing effects made bedtime adherence trivial, even under normally fatigued, uncomfortable, stressed, and/or non-sleepy conditions. This is in line with the general increase in conscientiousness and focus I’ve observed.

Likewise, when actually in the bed trying to fall asleep against significant biological resistance, the meditation proved a Godsend. Since it contains no words, it can be practiced deep into the gradient of unconsciousness, so that the actual transition to sleep is undetectable. The next morning, the only thoughts I can remember having whilst trying to fall asleep are the meditation itself. This was even true in the case of a nap, where I was persuaded I hadn’t fallen asleep at all, and instead merely lightly meditated, yet awoke to discover I’d slept through 1.5 hours of alarm. (A consequence of overeating fatigue, not meditation.) In my addled state, it took me a few moments to realize the mutual impossibility of the two facts. This makes me wonder whether I continue meditating through some portion of actual sleep.

** improved quality of work

Both quality and quantity of my work have improved thanks to meditation. While I have much to thank Cyborganize for, gone are the deep-socket obsessive issues that used to plague my working experience. What gets done is well-executed, insightful, and of sufficient volume to impart significant life momentum over a relatively short period of application. Extrapolating this momentum over a longer period gives me a staggering sense of what I’ve been missing.

** improved quality of leisure

Although I feel that my rests are now more reasonably aligned with biological limitations, downtime still does happen. My occupations during such times are greatly improved. Rather than seeking to fill a hole left by emotional distress and instability with cheap entertainment, I’m now drawn to more substantial fare. I’ve replaced a steady stream of light escapist Kindle purchases with a steady survey of the Project Gutenberg library, conveniently powered by the FBReader and Free Classics Android apps. The result is far more uplifting and instructive, as long as I avoid those pestilent seeds of leftist corruption scattered amidst the wheat – e.g. Les Miserables, whose lesson is that criminals are noble Thals, rather than feral subhumans.

** the limits of meditation

Meditation is nothing more than a mental habit, and I suppose it is too much to ask that one habit supplant all others. Rather, from this habit, the construction of the other necessary habits naturally flows. Even meditation is not sufficient to make every choice perfectly at every moment, and against every contrary inducement. But it is more than enough to ensure such an outcome is extremely probable, when allied with good health, a fully developed system of circumstantial habits, and application over time.

That last is the most important. Having spent so much time gaining self-mastery, I now look forward to the cumulative effects of its uninterrupted and lengthy enjoyment with great hope and pleasure. That is the stuff of which civilization has made, and I have languished too long on the outermost barbarous periphery.

With this sensation of completeness comes a desire to document, so what follows is a rough sketch.

** the meditation

Inhale and exhale, envisioning a dimensionless point located in your brain. If the point expands to a sphere, try to tighten its diameter to zero. The tighter the point, the greater the concentration. Repeat.

This is the meditation of the mind. Notice the clean clarity, focus and emptiness it provides.

Now repeat the process, but locate the point at your “heart”, or rather a point at the center of your chest. We are meditating, not anatomizing.

This is the meditation of the heart. You may feel mild sorrow – experience that until it passes. It should be soon replaced by clean well-being.

Repeat the process again, but with the point located at your groin. You should feel something akin to virility or testosterone. If you don’t, tighten the point (mentally, not physically!), and make sure it is located correctly and distinctly in your mental awareness.

This is the meditation of balls. Every man needs them. I don’t know what effect this would have on a woman; presumably it might increase her natural feminity and sensuality.

We are not done. Now try each point, but speak in tongues within your mind, as you inhale and exhale. Channel the tongues through the point, the same way you do your breath. The more distinctly you can hold each element, the greater the effect.

Lastly the sequence. My preference is two breaths groin, two breaths heart, two breaths mind – an ascending motion. I’ve tried other variations, but find this works best even when trying to fall asleep.

** the diet

A chicken breast, a handful of shrimp, and a cup of white rice comprise one pressure cooker pot. I eat 1-2 pots per day. It takes 4-7 plates to finish a pot, I never counted. I drink or eat nothing else but bottled water.

** the habits

On my Android phone, I set various alarms. In addition to the 1 hour plate spacing rule, I nap for 20 minutes every 3 hours. I set the 20 minute wakeup timer at the same time as the 3hr 20 minute next nap reminder. Habit chaining = adherence.

I use background videos, mostly of girls dancing in bikinis or less, to enliven my workspace, but since upgrading my meditation I find music to be a needless distraction. Thus the videos stay muted, or on very low volume.

In addition to Cyborganize, I employ the following daily checklist:

*** day progression

- [X] proto-koans
- [X] vids on
- [X] brush teeth
- [X] breakfast
- [X] andro+ M/W/Sa till 09/26/14. see androplus.ods
- [X] health spreadsheet data entry
- [X] journal
- [X] health experiment update
- [X] reaction speed
- [X] grab eye mask, put on couch / in jacket
- [ ] shave
- [ ] shower
- [ ] make bed
- [ ] 1 PM: Stop smoking well before sundown

*** sundown

- [ ] Exercise to failure
- [ ] chillout music
- [ ] red sunglasses
- [ ] apply BP
- [ ] prep bed – make bed, move blindfold
- [ ] KIT phone calls

*** bedtime alarm

- [ ] evening data entry: health, outings and timergy
- [ ] journal
- [ ] lights out to bed sequence: utorrent, backups, koans, grab phone, singlescreen pc, mute, lights out, bed.

** conclusion

The above checklist uses Emacs Org-Mode. Unfortunately, the actual correct version of Cyborganize is not published, although it has been stable for months if not years. The currently published version is bad and should not be used. I will get around to updating it eventually.

Otherwise, you have here everything I use for self-mastery.

UPDATE:

There can be no doubt. The meditation works. I can grind all the way down to the bare metal of biological limits.

I remember the first time I tried exercising to failure with the meditation. I hit my usual failure point and didn’t even notice it. Just kept going long, long past it, until the muscles ACTUALLY failed. Not the psychological failure point, not the emotional failure point, the physical one. Then I walked it off, not even noticing it during recovery, just naturally adjusting my gait to the muscles that didn’t work. No bluster, no bluff, just bare metal.

My spirit’s drive shaft has always been made of steel. But without a proper transmission in place, the gears just shredded into my soul, making a gooey mess. Now I have a diamond transmission. This is what I always wanted. It was worth the endless iterations, worth the illness itself.

I may hydroplane, I may blow out all four tires and scrape along on rims. Doesn’t matter. As long as fire drives shaft drives gears, I am content.

Preliminary data indicates it works socially too.

As long as I have enough focus to meditate, fatigue, pain, depression, anxiety, fear, etc are my bitch. And if I don’t, I’m too incapacitated to do anything about it anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Viva morte.

I’m now two people: an unstoppable juggernaut of meditation-fueled willpower, and an horizontal chronic fatigue patient who can only manage light reading. The transition is abrupt – I’m either above or below the water line. In my horizontal state, I can just manage to avoid regimen errors, thanks to residual willpower and ingrained effective habits.

I’m pleased with the sharpness of the transition, because it means my results are directly tied to hard biological limits, with no fuzziness due to moral failure. Granted, I could burn cortisol and adrenaline to achieve temporary bursts of activity during the fatigued state, but only at prohibitive biological cost. In the absence of dire circumstances, giving in to the overwhelming impulse to rest is morally sound.

With the overeating problem safely in its gory grave, my last source of significant gut pain is gone, and I have the luxury of focusing on plain fatigue, the last and lowest-priority of my symptoms to eliminate.

My physical endurance pool is wide but shallow. I can expect to lose an hour or two recovering from three spent standing and teaching. Perhaps more shrimp would fix that, or some more radical deep-healing treatment.

Of greater concern are the half and full days I’m still losing. The main cause appears to be time-shifting of my eating schedule, usually occasioned by travel or work. I normally eat the first half of the day and fast the second. Shifting this by X hours seems to cause 2x-5x hours of fatigue downtime, even if all eating still occurs during daylight hours.

The new capabilities unlocked by meditation have inspired a possible solution. Even when fatigued, I can usually meditate when attempting to sleep. Closed eyes and still body increase available mental focus. Thus instead of accepting the downtime as an excuse for light reading, I could resolve to always meditate all the time. If I’m unable to meditate while upright and working, then lie down and go to “sleep” until I can again.

In the past I’ve avoided doing this for several reasons:
1. Polyphasic sleep best practices recommend limiting naps to 20 minutes to avoid poor naps and Circadian disruption.
2. With previous meditation methods, meditating through boredom was prohibitively difficult.
3. It didn’t work for me when I tried it, and would’ve involved sleeping all the time, potentially.

However, I suspect that my new meditative system renders sleep more deeply restorative, and I know that #2 is no longer an issue. Improved health gives additional reason for #3 no longer applying. Lastly, I have significant personal evidence to suggest that #1 is a rule of thumb which does not apply in cases of illness.

If this experiment works, I will be able to maintain my meditation for all waking hours, increase uptime, and minimize downtime. That would be ideal.

I do need to free up extra time now that work has begun again, so that I can pursue KS and other projects. My work week is still quite short, and I’ve managed to reduce prep time to zero. At minimum, I’ll have weekends free. But I’d like 1/3 or 1/2 of my weekdays to also be productive. My hope is to achieve this by ruthlessly binding myself in chains of routine and discipline.

My primary goal now is to avoid sub-waterline fatigue state by never ever shifting my Circadian smoking and eating Zeitgeibers. It seems to be going well; I’m sleeping at sunset and waking an hour or two before dawn. I paid my painful debt from the 00:00 Sunday evening deadline-induced bedtime without further fuckups and am recovered.

I’ve also improved the meditation a bit further. It’s already linked to breathing; linking it to the heartbeat as well gives it a much stronger, more immersive rhythm. This especially improves social performance. It’s essentially biofeedback on your two primary indicators of alarm/relaxation. Which means that your internal rhythm is internally set rather than susceptible to outside influence. Which means you have a strong frame. It also feels better, provides better focus, etc.

I also wanted to find a way to cut down on my light reading while stuck in the sub-waterline fatigue state. Ideally I should be resting instead of reading. But I have no willpower to force myself to rest, and the book trance draws me in.

The simplest right action I can execute in such a situation is to close my eyes. Doing so makes meditation easier and more powerful, negating some of the fatigue. This needs to be an automatic habit; otherwise I won’t have the willpower to trigger it while fatigued. So I decided to permanently make having eyes a privilege, one revoked whenever meditation falters. I had discarded all my hand koans, but I felt this one was worth printing across the knuckles: “eyes” “priv”.

In a similar vein, I think “koan” is now a counterproductive misnomer. My koans were about identity resonance and coping with pain. The meditative techniques I’m using now are completely about the chains of discipline. They contain no linguistic identity content whatsoever, because any linguistic construct will create edges of dissonance, never capable of embodying the still/flowing pool/stream that is the real self – to use words to describe what words can’t.

More to the point, I am not doing this to feel better, or look better, or be cooler, or avoid pain, or even do the right thing. None of those motivations work; they introduce polluting eddies. Discipline is a pure act of will, done for its own sake, because the alternative is pure crap. So the name I call it is the reason I’m doing it: “Doing Discipline”. I figured this was worth putting on the hands, a D on the top of each hand.

The improvements give me much better resistance to fatigue-induced procrastination, though I’m by no means immune. I doubt that’s possible, though I hope to see continued gains as the eyes-closed habit becomes ingrained. Ironically, the elimination of secondary aims coincides with their fulfillment, as the social performance is now exactly as desired.

My physical energy reserves are pathetic. Five non-consecutive hours on my feet and I’m as tired as a normal man would feel after a day’s physical labor. It’s been like this forever, but I seem constitutionally incapable of fully recognizing such things when they are ambiguously intermixed with moral failure. Fortunately, that is no longer the case.

I can feel each new acknowledged limitation like a link in the chains binding my body, settling me into fixity, diminishing superfluous possibilities. And how do you escape unbreakable chains? By becoming the chains.

The whole thing, all of it, is chains. Every heartbeat, every breath is a reminder of the limits of flesh. We are living dissections stretched on the glass of time. The true path, forged link by link by act of will, is the path of least and most resistance. Chain does not bend, suffer or break; it simply is. Yet pulled taut, it transmits every sympathetic tension, up and down the line.

I finally did it; I started surfing the fatigue. I’d already reduced the ambiguous moral failure to a meniscus; either I was submerged and halted or meditating and productive. But when fatigued without sleepiness, I couldn’t force myself to rest, instead reading uselessly albeit pleasurably.

The concept of becoming the chains did it for me. Duty, the act of meditation, weakness, and my limits all became part of one and the same chain, filling the present moment. A single, undivided act of existence, in which it became natural to close my eyes when fatigue submerged me, until the natural bouyancy of sensory deprivation returned me to the surface. Instead of wiping out with the wave, I was surfing.

This concept is very freeing, in its fatalism and removal of alternative. In the absence of choice, there is joy. Yet it combines perfect realism with perfect duty. The act of existence is the same as identity is the same as unconscious right action.

The eye that has never enough of seeing, and the lizard brain’s lazy hands that foldeth for a little rest, have been set against each other, and the house of vice, divided against itself, cannot stand.

So, in sum, I changed my hand koan from “Doing Discipline” to “Become Chains”. But it is merely the reason and best fitting label, not part of the meditation itself. The reminder and spur, and perhaps also an echo of the unconscious thought that shapes it.

All in all, it’s a subtle difference, I suppose, like that between traveling for the journey versus the destination. But in meditation, both must be the same… and the traveler too.

I think perhaps the best way to represent this tweak to the meditation is to occasionally visualize the links of a chain sliding through the current meditation loci, one link per heartbeat. The point is better for maximizing focus; the chain is better for motivation, identity, or suffering.

In fact, thank God I have this new option. Focusing while experiencing severe physical pain heightens the sensation and is a very bad idea. Given how the two work, it’s probably best to use the chain whenever unable or unwilling to bring focus to a point. Nothing speaks to wayward flesh like a chain in the dark. And nothing stills the urgency of unfeasible action like the implacable advance of its cold links.

I’ve been trying to maintain fatigue resistance deeper and deeper below the waterline. I’m definitely making progress, becoming tougher. But I still crack, still fail. Which lets me identify design faults, hence the post.

At below waterline, willpower and focus are practically nonexistent, so you only get space for one koan, and it must be a highly efficient motivator. Any kind of “become chains” or “I am chains” koan works ok in the shallows, but fails at middle depths. It has too much pride and boast in it. Past a certain point, those sources no longer supply any emotional impetus.

So I can’t rely on the reflex of conscientiousness, or the reflex of pride, or the sting of conscience, for my motivator. What’s left? The lights of the surface world are winking out as we plunge into the deep.

Ah, but there’s still something – a fairy glow off to the right. Sure, it’s only the glow-worm lure of a lantern-jawed monstrosity. But we can use it.

In deep fatigue, the mind fractures into disconnected rambles. The inner monologue may even lose intra-sentence coherency. The situation seems hopeless.

But there is one reflex that remains – a lizard reflex, old as pain and survival. Or at least, a monkey reflex… the fear of banishment from the troupe. The emotional processing of one’s value and place in the troupe hierarchy. For eons, this has been a matter of life and death. As long as a spark of awareness remains, the brain will keep processing that core data stream.

So I wait for the little jolts of pain, anxiety, shame or uncertainty to run down that main info trunk. And when one hits, I indulge the frontal cortex’s reflex to make up a story about it, to “explain” the situation “rationally”. Then I hijack the explanation’s content, switching it to “I have chains.”

At first glance, it’s just an excuse (albeit a good one). A topical anaesthetic. But that’s camouflage over the real payload. The excuse is also the solution – the chains of limitation and suffering are the same as the chains of meditative practice. Having them means being unable to escape them, and having them means practicing them. Seeing them, naming them, is becoming aware of them, is doing them.

So the koan “I have chains” is a prisoner’s ironic answer to his depressed lament, “I have nothing.”

I think this might be the theoretical limit. I can’t imagine any “light sources” that exist deeper in fatigue than this one. It still needs testing, though, and maybe if I hang out there long enough I’ll find some ocean vent.

The next trick is making the eyes close more reliably, preventing procrastination and enforcing rest. “Eyes are a privilege” was also a pride-based koan, and fails past the shallows. “Link lids” might work better.

The chains koans’ resistance to fatigue is superlative. It’s beyond anything I’ve tested. I haven’t hit invulnerability yet, but I’m making steady progress towards the ocean floor.

I decided to go ahead and make my armor active instead of passive, burning out any sources of downtime procrastination by deleting them, setting up barriers, etc. This would’ve been a useless gesture while the urge was still overwhelming, since I’d just bypass the barriers during a sufficiently long downtime. But now only a fully developed downtime procrastination trance is a real obstacle, so the barriers are effective. The goal is to either do something at the top of the Cyborganize queue or meditate with eyes closed, and that includes in-transit reading selection.

I also figured out that the rice content of my meals had crept up too high. I’d theorized that since rice is my only guaranteed digestive inert nutrient, little harm could come of it. But when it dilutes the meat sufficiently, the result is still overeating to get at craved protein and micronutrients. Cutting rice intake by half greatly relieved overeating pressure, taking pressure off the whole regimen and improving energy.

I also decided to add “Follow me” as a secondary stage to my “I have chains” koan trigger. The full text is “Take up your chains and follow me”, a paraphrase of Jesus. The motivational value for an MT Christian should be obvious. Adding the bit of text doesn’t cost much because it’s just an occasional trigger, not part of the actual meditation.

Lastly, hat tip to Illuminatus for finding Lana Del Ray, a genuine deepsocket female, one I’m willing to bet is MT. Her music videos hit my soul with an intensity no female singer has matched. It’s encouraging to find an example of home for our bastard race.

Holy shit, check out her bio:

“studying a branch of philosophy known as metaphysics[11][18][19] because “it bridged the gap between God and science. I was interested in God and how technology could bring us closer to finding out where we came from and why.”[20] She said, “that was when my musical experience began. I kind of found people for myself.””

High linguistic facility and binary-truth obsession with ultimate why: check
Artistic savagery, honesty, melancholy glory and style, darkness and light: check.
Seriously intelligent lyrical content: check.

I’m starting to realize what I want.

EDIT:

Confirming her MT status, a song named Ultraviolence:

And here she is on walkabout. Sucks for chicks. Talk about lost, tarnished, remnants of glory.

We’re bastard children, half in one world, half in the other, belonging to none. Even nature won’t have us. There’s not one world where we belong. But we might just be the antidote to the curious, temporary poison afflicting this one. Certainly quicker acting than Tex’s long term Holocene health plan seems to promise. I hope, when it’s done, we die.

It’s a bizarre feeling when everything starts to work at once. There were so many necessary but not sufficient components to return me to a reasonably functional level. I seem to have finally stepped over that threshold. Instead of merely having achieved minimal biological stability and productivity for some of each day, I’m at moderately subpar biological health and moderately above average productivity each day.

The rice content of my meals had indeed crept up too high, a conservative tendency that resulted in a subtle buildup of malnutrition forcing overeating to get at the buried meat nutrients. Cutting back by half fixed the problem dramatically. I estimate it cut fatigue at least by half, and improvements continue to accrue.

At the same time, I noticed my meditation getting a little bit fuzzy. Switching between using visualizing a point and using chains diluted its efficacy. Yet neither could be discarded. I also noticed that the point visualization was strong on inhale and weak on exhale. The chains visualization on the other hand displayed the opposite tendency.

So I combined them. Point on inhale, chains on exhale. And the meditative results immediately jumped from great to absurd.

- Problems I wasn’t even trying to solve with meditation were solved. Problems I thought were permanent features of my psyche, things I simply had to live with, were solved.
- I lost or mostly lost the need to switch in and out of meditation when engaging overmind thought, e.g. in writing or speaking or thinking. Words became vastly less necessary, thoughts vastly less distracting. The subconscious was processing everything. I think benefits will continue to accrue as I lose the dependence on linear discursive inner monologue thought.
- Productivity improved greatly, qualitatitively and quantitatively. I simultaneously grew more aware of the operation of the real engine of productivity, the r-mode brain. I came to understand that I had previously been trying to over-optimize l-mode task switching for productivity, to the detriment of r-mode needs and style. Task switching incurs a cost because relevant context must be loaded into r-mode “RAM” in order to make intelligent holistic evaluations.
- Frictional resistance to starting and continuing work greatly decreased. The friction that remained was no longer undesirable, but beneficial. It represented the time needed for r-mode to disengage from the previous problem and load the next. E.g., when solving a complex technical problem, my conscience wanted me to switch to another task during a lengthy download. I didn’t do so, which would’ve previously occasioned guilt stress and friction. But this time I realized I needed to keep the problem loaded in r-mode, thus requiring single-tasking. High fatigue levels at that time meant I needed to single-task, that I couldn’t afford task switching without an unacceptable voltage drop. The new meditation permitted me to complete the task optimally – on time and under budget.
- The harmful effects of the info-obsessive concentration trance appear to be broken. This held true both for engrossing entertainment and complex frustrating work. Appropriate switching occurred naturally and without l-mode involvement. I consumed entertainment where appropriate to rest, closed eyes for deeper rest, and worked, all intertwined in a congruent weave far beyond the capabilities of l-mode to orchestrate. Guilt was silenced, conscience satisfied, and the l-mode awed into silence.
- The impact of all negative emotions was severely blunted and attenuated, yet without the soul deadening or suppression that typically accompanies such effects when achieved by word-based koans. In other words, I became absurdly tough, without losing humanity or misaligning personality.
- The burden of conscious thought and decisionmaking was lifted, replaced by superior and effort-free automaticity. The only act of will necessary was that of maintaining the meditation itself, which is pleasurable and fairly light. True, the higher the fatigue, the greater the effort required, and the spottier the results. However, the meditation degrades very gracefully as fatigue increases. Nothing really bad happens, except that the proportion of rest/entertainment to work changes, without ever becoming pathological.

I haven’t finished testing the social effects yet, but preliminary data indicates a similar trend of great to absurd.

The best part of this is that it appears I can simply throw out all my words and act unconsciously from now on. This means the largest workload in my life, l-mode due diligence to ensure compliance with conscience, is now just gone.

In entertainment news, I’m watching the Fargo series and playing the Lana Del Ray for background music videos.

I’ve got some logistical tangles to fix before I start work on KS again. Problems I lacked strength to solve for several weeks have been knocked out in a couple of days, with the combination of reduced rice and improved meditation. In my previous posts, I was celebrating being off Death Row, basically. Now I’m celebrating escape from the chain gang, and the beginning of life on easy mode. These things are relative. As Manson said, it’s a long hard road out of hell.

None of this could’ve happened if I hadn’t spent the entire summer incapacitated, deliberately pushing myself to the edge of malnutrition and holding there to collect valid data. I’ve been through hell many times, but I had to return and painstakingly chart every step through it to find my way out. The one good thing about the place is it’s hot enough to burn away every false hypothesis.

Well, I just had my version of a perfect day. Full work day, half standing, half at desk, with no fatigue. Instead of collapsing into a stupor at the end, took a walk, made a high-utility friend, and then resumed productivity at home.

I’ve only exposed one hole in the meditation. While social performance is great, it seems somewhat poorly adapted for expressing and experiencing positive emotion. (Ha ha, wonder why.) The result is either underexpression of positive affect or succumbing to the temptation to go “off-script” and interrupt meditation. This only applies to happy – I do relaxed and neutral-positive fine.

I’ve always thought of “chains” in a negative, limiting sense, but the concept is easy to adapt to positivity. On one side of the coin is limitation and pain; on the other, surprise, spontaneity, savory briefness, poignancy, thrills etc. This teaches one to savor and anticipate happiness without resisting or regretting its inevitable passing.

I admit the end of today left me feeling somewhat baffled, to the point where I wondered whether I might be more fatigued than I felt. Actually, I just hadn’t figured out how to congruently be happy while meditating, and the two were fighting for mental position. What a hilarious conflict to have. Anyhow, now I know how to incorporate the damn sunbeams.

I always assumed that achieving discipline required sacrificing some measure of joy. How odd should that turn out not to be the case. There ought to be a price for such things. What exactly am I sacrificing? It’s unclear.

Losing the ability to obsess over reams of reheated l-mode garbage doesn’t seem like a loss. It all came from r-mode anyway, so why am I putting it into words? And then, heaven forbid a decision gets made, r-mode has to execute. So outside communication, l-mode is just a complete waste of time.

Am I wrong? Does anyone actually believe using the above massively inefficient process to generate an inner monologue can ever IMPROVE the quality of thinking, pace LessWrong?

Anyhow, the new meditation weighs so lightly on me after the point-inhale chains-exhale modification, that “Follow me” is too heavy a trigger. “My yoke is light” works better – Jesus again. I’m more floating than following, but yes the yoke is light.

Every now and then there’s a perfect MT TV show. Both “Profit”s qualify – one an entrepreneurial how-to, the other a corporate psychopathy how-to. “Fargo” is another, a Minnesota hit-man character study of the wolf. Of the three, the last career appeals to me most viscerally, were it possible to only kill the wicked or r-selected; i.e., the vast majority.

The “I have chains” trigger koan worked fine in painful, straitened circumstances, but is slightly inadequate for happy ones. I figured out the problem. The “only” was implied as long as  I was suffering, but this implied meaning was lost when I stopped. So I added it explicitly: “I only have chains.” Job would agree.

I also noticed that “My yoke is light” doesn’t work when fatigued, so I need both “Follow me” for effortful meditation, and “Yoke is light” for abundant energy states.

I can now absorb about two full work days before I start feeling fatigue onset and lose evening willpower, causing regimen lapse. So my guess that fatigue was reduced by half appears accurate.

I’ve dithered on naming conventions. A koan is by definition a word or set of words. My primary meditation now is wordless. Koans are just secondary triggers to maximize meditation uptime. I think I’ll call the wordless meditation the Way.

In a previous post I wondered what exactly doing the Way all the time sacrificed. It was unclear because I hadn’t tested it in a non-suffering state. Now that I have more abundant energy, the sacrifice becomes clear. I have to love the Way more than anything else. Otherwise another mental entity will inevitably dominate consciousness at some point, thus losing the discipline of the Way.

That means loving it more than thought, pain, pleasure, worry, a person, God, anything. Flirting, sex, working, whatever, it always has to be primary.

I’m fine with it. It’s the only thing I can actually possess. It’s what enables me to actually serve God usefully. So I don’t think it sacrilege to put it first; rather, a religious duty.

The benefits for frame control and inner imperturbability are obvious. A primary source of dominance is inner unaffectedness. Breath and heartbeat are the fundamental biological arousal indicators. Any attempt to simulate unflappability is doomed if these are not regulated. Thus unaffectedness cannot be faked; it must be managed at the subconscious level – via the Way.

I modified the trigger to remind me of this: “I only have/love chains.”

It’s no coincidence that using this meditation produced my fastest individual reaction score ever on the Seth Roberts test, and an overall performance of 96th percentile despite not being at biological peak.

It seems that applying this uncompromising rubric of absolute love for the Way leads to a more freestyle meditation, a more immersive experience than the more rigidly rule-based practice I used before.

So, my two tests for koan design are the following:
1. Work despite fatigue
2. Cold approach

These represent peak difficulty for conscientiousness and social adaptation respectively.

Interestingly, focus/conscientiousness and social adaptation are inversely correlated. I am naturally good at working with laser focus, because my brain architecture relies heavily on filtering, abstraction and barriers. I am naturally bad at extrovert socializing, for the same reasons.

Likewise, a koan that produces intensely focused work is likely to bomb socially, and a fuzzy feel-good koan that works socially is likely to ruin discipline when working alone.

That is what happened when I put my chains koan to the cold approach test. It failed, so I started changing it, which then caused it to fail test #1 as well. Building a koan that passes both tests is absurdly tricky.

I passed both tests yesterday. The passing design is too complicated-yet-simple to attempt explaining yet. I don’t know where to begin. Also, I should test it longer.

It’s still chains, but with a few core and a lot of periphery upgrades. The wordless reactor core is bimodal, one for alone and one for in company. The primary trigger has several variations to manage switching and regulate reactor temperature. Then the whole is wrapped in concentric rings of peripheral adherence triggers and inflectors.

I have to say it’s about as intricate as my proof, which also appears deceptively simple to those who haven’t waded through Kant.

I’m not sure it’s useful for anyone but me. My hardware/software combo is vanishingly rare. Perhaps the process is useless as well. Koanic experimentation is like editing the main operating system of the host PC – apt to blow up in your face repeatedly. Still, I can’t imagine living without the results. In fact, given the choice between permanently losing internet or koans, I’d keep the koans.

Since I am an unnatural being in an unnatural environment pursuing unnatural objectives, I would be utterly stupid to use my natural operating system.

One other fun bit:
1. Alone working needs a depressed state, because comfort breeds stasis.
2. Together socializing needs a comfortable state, because effort breeds incongruence.
3. Yet the introvert’s norm is comfort alone, anxiety together – which is inversely optimal.

Thus the price of victory is Pyrrhic – isolated hours must be experienced as suffering to maximize discipline. The contrast in affect then fuels socializing.

I speak of a wordless, general, mild, pervasive depression that induces realism and makes the lizard brain get up and move. Not the crippling, pathological varieties. I simply let my face relax into stone, and a slow emptiness begin to beat in my heart, as the natural barriers of my mental architecture choke off emotional life. The capacity to enjoy procrastination dies and right action becomes natural, but is not accompanied by distracting pleasure.

Doll house whore house cat house grass house.…

I have misunderstood the purpose of koans. They are an evolving, self building set of psychological rails that grow with the process of maturation.

I need a single KPI that captures absolute success or failure. The accurate metric is God’s accounting system, as described in Jesus’ parables of the talents.

Cyborganize is missing the tactical time execution component. That piece is already done by Cal Newport in his book, How to be a Straight A Student. The key is a paralell paper system primarily focused on setting a morning daily schedule and blocking significant time commitments into the 1 month near feature. Newport is right that this needs to be done on paper, not on a screen.

Management and execution is the traction point where rubber meets road, and what I’ve been missing.

There was an unanticipated stretch of road between finding my theoretical baseline stable health formula and achieving stabilization and acceptable performance in practice. I have to eat and smoke only between 0700 and 1400, with perfect consistency. This is not easy to maintain given interference from work, logistics, life, temptation, procrastination, and depression factors. My koans needed to be better, and I needed more biological health buffer. After a few failed experiments and slipups, I found that buffer by doubling UDCA and digestive enzyme dosages.

I read Jack Donovan’s excellent The Way of Men. Man is a killer chimpanzee with an angelic consciousness that relates to God, an amphibian of flesh and spirit. Koans must ratify and formalize this nature.

The order of acquisition, to paraphrase Scarface, is: “First you get the pack, then you get the territory, then you get the women.” Anything else is ashes and dust for a K-selected soul and knightly Christian spirit.

Social interactions with non-pack members have no value. I can bond on shared forerunner traits and/or on a common religious and ideological purpose. Otherwise, the interaction is as empty and unfulfilling as the calories in a doughnut. I need a buffer of meaningful interactions in my life to power through empty ones. I gain nothing from forcing empty interactions, whether in the name of Game, extroversion or business. Instead, I lose well-being and energy from a pervasive sense of alienation, disgust and emptiness.

When I was young, I was foolish and assumed that others were like me. I thus brought an happy energy to those interactions and made some initial progress before encountering mystifying difficulties. Now I understand that they are not like me in any worthwhile sense, and cannot muster the enthusiasm.

The proper life rhythms are falling into place. Double monitors during the day, single dimming monitor otherwise. Red sunglasses and food and smoking Zeitgeibers. The way forward, I believe, is simple management and execution, using the procedures and workflows I’ve already designed. No grand strategic decision produces success; rather processes for strategic insight and continuous execution produce results.

I have means and mobility to switch venues after sundown daily, aiding concentration and mood, although the people I meet are empty. I’m buying the Lifetrac standing treadmill to power long stretches of concentrated learning and mental effort.

I understand that everything will be empty until I have a pack, and a real pack seems a long way off. The next iteration of the Forerunner Forums should be built on voluntary Spartan-style fraternities. Gaming together simulates cooperative hunting and warfare to facilitate bonding. After the pack is formed, it can figure out territory together. Territory before a pack is pointless, because it cannot be secured. Likewise a wife.

Territory can be economic, not just geographic. To be an employee of a Western corporation is to make submission to false gods. I will not kneel to the Cathedral’s golden DiversiCalf, or join the parasitic financier’s feast. To do so is as empty as conversation with enemies. Finding clean sources of money is hard, but doable.

Fortunately, the Kingdom is a pack, and possesses absolute power. With time and execution, these things will come. It is my duty to manage my neighboring affairs, to manage what is near, and not concern myself with far. Thus the immediate path becomes clear, and the rest is above my pay grade.

Koanic is a stupid name that harks back to the Platonist rejection of flesh, a Christian error ingrained by my upbringing. When I get around to relaunching, I’ll do it under the name Koanimal. Harmony of chimp and spirit is the way. Hesse’s Siddharta is an insightful study of maturation from which this lesson can be drawn, if viewed through a proper lens.

Simple, patient, ruthless and crafty execution in the now are animal traits. Humility and meekness towards God are spiritual. Both are necessary for peace, as Joseph’s arc from slave to steward over Egypt illustrates.

It’s not just fatigue I’ve been dealing with. The gut is the center of the immune system. An irritant passes through and filters into the bloodstream, kicking off the immune response. It’s a full body event that’s like a low temperature fire. All systems are affected.

It was the damn Chinese chicken. They’ve got that nightmare cocktail of random drugs only a psychopath would put into food, plus the usual horrid CAFO meat product. No organic out here.

Course I’d tried going all shrimp+rice multiple times. Didn’t succeed for two reasons:
1. Most shrimp brands are even more poisonous than the chicken. Sulfates and soy+wheat meal and God knows what else.
2. Not enough shrimp. I need 2-3 200-300 gram bags per day. Never tried it at that level, partly out of caution, partly out of frugality.

The chicken was just borderline poisonous. If I limited my intake to 1-2 breasts per day I could average about 1 cascading error per week, which was enough to make me think koans and regimen adherence was the problem. Fewer fat-soluble toxins get stored in lean meat, and breasts are the leanest. But that’s not enough protein, particularly when the protein is poisonous and thus not well digested. And the occasional big breast would overload me into failure without appearing in the data.

I had two clues to work with:
1. Never wiping clean since coming to Chengdu, which was anomalous. I used to get a clean wipe at least some of the time.
2. Always being in at least a low state of immune response.

Anyhow, after another irresistible crash seemingly precipitated by one of those anomalously large chicken breasts, I reread my Chris Kesser. Step 1 is remove the irritants. So I decided to eliminate chicken and go full shrimp+rice. It worked, far more quickly than my recovery model predicted was possible.

I don’t know what to make of the recent study clearing Accutane of causing IBD. Small sample size invites skepticism, as does massive contrary evidence. But maybe the Accutane-IBD link is a correlative error. There are ample alternative causal factors. First, Thal genetics and a mild version of the SAD. Then, over the early years of my decline, dismissing biological limits as weakness to be pushed through. This attitude culminated in a period of heavy Red Bull consumption. I also exposed myself for years to China Mainland food and water impurities without taking sufficient precautions. It could be that the rate of damage accumulation during this time simply outpaced my defensive efforts and learning rate.

I don’t know what the lesson is here. It reminds me of my battle to properly integrate Christianity, masculinity, and wordliness. There is no substitute for the right answer, and no easy way to reach it.

“If you are real, make me whole,” I cried out to God yesterday. That’s something I never do. I immediately quoted to myself, “Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test.” The next day, I got my reprieve.

My koans held steady throughout the downcycle. No changes, work fine. But nothing’s strong enough to prevent the progression from suppressed to pinned during a full-blown immune reaction. The simplest things are hard, and if you use up the day’s meagre allotment of energy, you’re grateful to bump into walls, because they help keep you upright.

Anyhow, the seeds of the antithesis to the attitude in my last post were present in it. The animal way, process not result, and r vs K provide an alternate pathway for social interaction and meaning.

So even if it’s China to blame, not Accutane, I’d still prefer the decade of physical suffering in the East piercing my Thal biological vulnerabilities to a decade of spiritual suffering under the Cathedral, breathing centuries of anti-Christendom memetic evolution into an ingenopathically unfiltered soul. I think the biological defenses were ultimately easier to build under fire than the soul ones would’ve been.

Exile in the desert sucks, and is supposed to. Now, though, I am going to have some fun.

Of course I could’ve saved myself a lot of trouble by not being an unemployable anti-SJW crusader in the USA, drowning myself in a programming job, and not retreating to the undeveloped East. That’s the path I recommend for full Thals, but for a Christian MT, it’s contemptible cowardice. Young men are inexperienced and rash; their worth is measured in fire, courage and honor. A man who waits for middle aged prudence to challenge evil will only learn how to continue in cravenness. And a man who listens to the advice of defeated fathers is submitting to the counsel of fools. As the Russians understood, when there is no one to teach, the price of victory is much blood.

Turns out the Chinese cigarette brand I was smoking was also functionally poisonous. Zhongnanhai 8′s. Dunno if they have any additives; internet research implied not, for Chinese cigarettes in general. But they do quite a bit of treatment and processing on the tobacco, and there’s a filter, so that could be enough.

In any case, the evidence was clear. I switched to handrolls and lotsa problems went away, including poor quality sleep. So that explains a lot, because my attempts to work were always linked to heavy cigarette consumption.

However, the real force multiplier was the arrival of my Lifespan DT-5 treadmill desk. Hooooly shit. My only objective is to either fight for the Kingdom or put a revolver to my head, and this lets me do it. Seth Roberts invented the concept, and it works. Being sedentary plays havoc with your metabolism, just like the SAD and diseases of civilization, as the astronaut sedentary studies demonstrate. Moreover, walking without the usual stimulation of a changing physical environment leads the monkey brain to latch onto abstract work like a terrier on a rat or a 6 on an alpha.

It just feels great. There’s no constant war against fatigue and procrastination. Stress, frustration and negative affect that piles up while sitting rolls away with the swagger stroll, left miles behind in the dust, keeping completed milestones company, both never to be revisited.

I wonder whether liver damage increases my susceptibility to the metabolic effects of being sedentary. My initial incacitation was brought about by super long working hours in Hong Kong, sitting at a desk and drinking Red Bulls to push myself harder. That was the wrong way to push. This is the right way. Now life can begin. Time to start rolling out what I’ve been saving for the last 10 years.

The physical pain of this illness was nothing compared to the soul destruction of failing in my one objective to work for the Kingdom. The amazing thing is the simple act of walking and working lets all that pain roll away, miles behind. All the difficulties with keeping the regimen, staying disciplined, self-control, are likewise gone. It was the damn sitting. All I wanted to do was work, which meant all I wanted to do was sit, which meant all that I wanted to do was fail.

The first inkling I had that sitting might be a genuine problem was in college, when I gave myself arrhythmia and a few grey hairs by workaholic sessions with poor posture. Shoulda taken the hint then.

It makes no logical sense that, on the same day, I can have 1-2/5 willpower and energy whilst sitting and pseudoworking, and then 4-5/5 energy and willpower, with the only difference being a treadmill desk. Or, it makes no logical sense if you have a Newtonian view of body energy reserves and output. It’s not physics, it’s chemistry. It’s not morality; it’s evolutionary biology.

I have four walls and a forge. I will not budge from this place, for love or money, until I’ve built my empire, or at least have had minions prep prep the next peripatetic lair.

The Bible says “Judge not,” and “Judge them by their fruits.” Popular, PUA and self-help culture are similarly confused. Are we to possess sound judgment, yet not exercise it? Such schizophrenia is not feasible – it is not even coherent.

Rather than throw out tested, time-honored tradition like a filthy liberal, let us correct our theory to reflect the facts. There are multiple levels of judgments, not one. Spiritual judgment occupies the highest moral valence. Intellectual judgment concerns probabilities and analysis. Monkey judgment is affect based and subcommunicated.

The danger of possessing a righteous spirit and a keenly discerning intellect is that one’s monkey judgment will become chronically stimulated, thus destroying one’s morale and charisma. The more sincere one’s spiritual commitment, the greater the tendency and danger.

The solution is two-fold. First, one must recognize monkey judgment as a separate level. Otherwise one risks calibrating monkey judgment at the cost of miscalibrating higher and more essential levels.

Secondly, one must establish a flexible method of controlling monkey judgment. It must be flexible, because there is no one single adaptive amplitude of monkey judgment. Neither happy hippy nor crusty curmudgeon get anywhere. E.g., the well-notched PUA flexes his degree of monkey judgment to the girl’s, crunching through exterior to get to the juicy middle.

It’s no different than an iris, which must constrict or open its aperture to accommodate the appropriate amount of light.

Most people do not need deliberate control over their Monkey Judgment Iris (MJI) because their spiritual and moral values are broadly in line with society. Thus their natural behavior will be accepted, expected and adaptive.

However, a second-generation Christian reactionary, or indeed anyone who is several standard deviations removed from the acceptable range of herd morality, will find he must exercise the strictest control to avoid being crippled.

This insight brought to you by the koanic process under PUA stress testing.

The most central part of the koans is the core, the always-on permanent steady state. It must be adaptive for both social and solo work. It must express the heart congruently with the full range of affect. It must silence maladaptive discursive thought without clouding the mind. It must inspire and motivate without disconnecting from reality.

My solution is “Faith Tongues [heart symbol] Dreams”.

Working backwards, Dreams stands for visualizing my dreams of advancing the Kingdom of God. Just as the Gramscians of the Frankfurt School wish to transform all of society into their vision of godless Communist utopia, so a Kingdom Christian wishes both to fulfill the original Adamic mandate by building human civilization, and bring that civilization under submission to Christ.

This comprehensive mission at all times provides direction and clarity, from the grand strategic level to the immediate tactical situation. Moreover, it provides joy, because one is seeing the world not as it is, but as it could be transformed, an image of Heaven and a reminder of promised life.

The heart symbol channels one’s congruent deep affect. I wear a medallion over my heart that symbolizes my Christian commitment. Affect is channeled to prevent repression and buildup.

Tongues stands for the tongues stream in the inner monolgue. One of the functions of tongues is to silence maladaptive discursive thought when needed. However, tongues that merely performs this function is dry and empty, because it lacks involvement of anything but the discursive faculty. Tongues must be given form and content. The form is the channeled heart affect, and the content is the visualized dreams.

Faith is a a prerequisite for the mustard seed who wishes to move mountains, or the PUA who wishes to mount an amore. It involves an irrational (but not a-rational) degree of confidence that the dreams will realize, and that the koanic structure works.

Returning to dreams, note that it is a different way of seeing the world, and thus an alternative to judgment. In fact, it is the polar opposite of judgment, because it sees the world’s potential rather than its actuality.

Thus it works in tandem with the Monkey Judgment Iris, which I renamed Monkey Dreams Iris. To some degree, the spiritual and intellectual judgment iris can also be controlled with the combination of these two.

In practice, this means changing the dreams visualization from including or excluding the person you’re talking with, based on the appropriate monkey inclusion/rejection response.  This provides an appropriate dynamic emotional response range without compromising core integrity.

I work on a TR-1200 DT5 Lifespan treadmill now. This greatly improved my productivity, but I still had some issues.

I have a dual monitor setup and use Cyborganize. However, I was still experiencing mental friction. It turns out that there is a friction inherent in screens. When I added a large paper notebook to my productivity setup, this friction went away. It seems that not only do the feet need to move forward, the hands do as well.

I use my notebook in a simple fashion. The left page is a scratch area. The right page is where I capture tasks and notes at will. It serves as a rudimentary timelog, since I can record start and end times for tasks. Notation is like this:

*T shower
*T cook
*T eat
*T pack backpack
*T process email

When I begin a task, I circle the *T and record a begin time. Then I cross it out and record an end time when it’s completed. This creates a sense of tactile progress and prevents the mind from sticking or getting overwhelmed and discouraged. It allows me to spend all day working alone without expending my emotional reserves.

I keep the notebook under my keyboard. I put my keyboard up on my laptop when I’m using the notebook. The TR1200 desk is spacious; everything fits.

Some of the entries from the notepad get transferred into Cyborganize when I close out a page. But most things, like time entries, I simply forget and move forward. There is adherence value in recording time entries, even if they are never processed for easy analysis.

Another new tool permits me to discard my notebook time entries. I purchased the Taplog app for my Android phone. This is a super fast, customizable Quantified Self recording tool. I use it to record biological inputs and events, track spending, record short journal entries, etc. It is the most effective QS/GTD capture tool available, with one exception. Extraction of data is not automatic, so time-sensitive data such as tasks should be routed through emails to self instead.

Taplog is fast and easy enough that capture alone adds sufficient value to justify its use. I have not needed to analyze my data in almost a month of use, because capture keeps my self-evaluation and holistic awareness objective. When enough data builds, I can use statistical analysis to mine for actionable insights for experimental design. Capturing biological inputs also enhances self-control.

The two greatest challenges to my self control are procrastination in the form of viewing, gaming and reading, and overeating. I’ll discuss the procrastination solution first, then overeating.

I noticed that major procrastination cascades tend to occur in the morning at first wakeup, and after coming home from work. The critical trigger is thus walking through the door into my livingroom. At that point, if I start working, I will continue; if I start procrastinating, I will fail. So my challenge was to design the lowest-friction trigger to begin work at that point.

The koan I built is “Cyborganize Walk Write”, which reminds me that execution is defined as three things: Using Cyborganize by writing in the notebook while walking on the treadmill.

In practice, it is a very easy habit to walk up to the turned off treadmill, pick up a pen, and start dumping tasks immediately into the notebook. This eliminates the friction created by screens and goes immediately begins reducing stressful mental open loops via capture.

It turns out that these “beginning of work” moments are the time when I have the most mental open loops, which makes it very easy to become discouraged and fall into procrastination. Far from being a duty, the journal is actually helpful, because it lets me think about less. From there it’s natural to turn on the treadmill and become addicted to the sense of progress.

If I’m wracked with pain and exhausted, I will still waste a day. But at least I will have to stand to do it, which will guarantee better sleep. If I can’t muster the strength to work with these advantages, I also can’t muster the procrastinatory organization to move the laptop off the treadmill. So I wind up either sitting and reading whatever books I’ve preselected on my phone, which is at least pseudo-productive, or standing and gaming/viewing, which exhausts the body, avoids sedentary syndrome, and encourages bedtime adherence, preventing a Circadian failure cascade.

All this leaves morale failure due to monkey judgment overstimulation as my remaining failure point. I described how to avoid that in previous posts.

Ah, I forgot overeating. I think this is mostly a consequence of my limited three ingredient diet, but it may also be partly universal to the human condition. Anyhow, my solution is the koan “Eat Smoke Write.” A cigarette after the first bowl interrupts the eating trance, and tobacco is an appetite suppressant. Immediately after that, I write in the journal, record the biological inputs, etc, starting the work habit chain. At that point, inertia favors continue work instead of continued eating.

As for general health, testing in jurisdictions where it is legal revealed that a combination of smoked and topical marijuana paste improved digestive tolerance, and shotgun vitamin supplementation corrected deficiencies. The aggressive combination of multiple simultaneous changes reflects a shift in experimental style from 2nd generation to 3rd generation warfare strategy. Also, THC reduces percentage of REM sleep; GABA corrects this for me, and also makes sleep onset much easier.

Lastly, I plan to test aggressive electrosleep. In the absence of heavy exercise, maximizing REM sleep seems biologically optimal.

First, select an appropriate textbook. Aim for the middle of class ability level. This method is tested with very large student ability level splits.

Second, be able to read and take notes much faster than your fastest student, or else know the material in advance. Have a subject mastery and speed advantage.

Third, build a grading spreadsheet. Page 1 has student names in column A. Use a random number generator to randomly call on students. For each page of the textbook, call on one student. Make him come to the front and teach the class his summary and analysis of the page. Rate his performance 0-5, and record on the spreadsheet. Offer detailed feedback on his performance, and correct and expand on his answer. Repeat for the next page.

Call on only one student per page, regardless of performance. If the performance is a zero, possibly try calling on one or two more if you are confident you will find a non-zero performance.

Do not wait for students to catch up. If a section is inadequately covered, go through it twice; do it even faster the second time.

If a page is full of problems instead of text, consider calling on one student for 1-3 problems instead of doing the whole page. Likewise, if there is a better natural textual division than a page, use that when calling on students.

Grades are compiled automatically in the spreadsheet. You may use either curve grading or objective 0-5 grading, with 4-5 = A, 3-4 = B, etc. Student grade is determined by the average of his performances. Thus students do not need to have an equal number of turns at bat.

Do not permit a student to teach the class unless he has prepared notes. This prevents hem-haw performances. Likewise, do not let students bring the book to the front to teach. For problems (rather than text), students may remain seated or bring the book to the board.

This method works for several reasons:
1. It forces students to either prepare or be stretched to their utmost trying (and failing) to match your speed. This maximizes learning within the time available, and is a form of speedreading training.
2. It provides immediate feedback on core summarization, analysis and presentation skills, all of which have real-world utility.
3. It relies on active recall to effect learning, rather than passive review, and forces note-taking.

In addition to the above steps, require an essay every class. Have students grade and comment each other’s essays 0-5 in class, and spot check student grading with the random calling method. Give a very short time limit for the grading to force speed.

The above method may become less effective as page count increases beyond that coverable in class time. I can get through about 30 pages in ~ 3 hours with breaks, which is sufficient for my purposes. For higher page counts, you could preferentially cover key sections.

Thanks to active recall and random sampling, quizzes and tests are unnecessary. Ideally the textbook itself will provide a degree of spaced repetition by building conceptually on previous material. Otherwise, just apply the method to some appropriate review material.

This method has only two sources of ongoing overhead:
1. Reporting weekly grades (with spreadsheet cell comments on individual scores) to relevant authorities
2. Recording one pre-graded stack of essay scores per class.

At heart, this method is based on the principle that “Doing is learning.” The focus is on the student doing the work, so that the student learns – rather than the teacher doing the work, while the students zone out. It transforms book learning into an active process, without speed-reducing frou-frou fluff.

In other words, it simulates autodidact right action. And it does so in students who are lost, clueless, and severely undermotivated and overworked. Their speed-readers’ headache moans of pain are sweet music to my ears.

Also, it has the great advantage of keeping the teacher entertained, challenged, stimulated, and on point.