Here is a list of “feeling-based” strategies that may help you get started on what you have trouble getting yourself to do:

If you are feeling:

1. unsure of where to start-> think of three really small, simple, actionable steps that would constitute a small amount of progress, but those steps in their most natural order, then start on the first of those steps

2. a lack of motivation -> make a list of all the reasons you care about this project and why it is meaningful or worth working on (if you can’t think of good reasons, maybe you should just drop the project), read this list back to yourself, and then get started.

3. too tired, during daytime -> try my “cool reboot” method (see: http://bit.ly/2Ehhy7N – just do whichever parts of the method that you are able to do wherever you are) then start working on the project immediately after.

4. too tired, during late evening -> go to sleep and set the alarm to wake up early, add another alarm on your phone to remind you to start the project shortly after you wake up.

5. overwhelmed by the magnitude of the project -> on paper, break the project down into large (at least mostly) independent pieces, then take the first of those pieces (the one that it would make sense to start working on next) and break that piece down into smaller (at least mostly) independent pieces, and so on, until you can start to see how you might actually accomplish the different small pieces since none of them seems impossibly large.

6. ambiguity about what the project actually is -> write down a first draft description of the project, making the description as concrete as you can manage (but don’t worry about filling in every detail), send this description to any collaborators you have for their feedback (if you have any collaborators), then get started working on any part of your concrete description that feels actionable.

7. overwhelmed by how many different things you need to do for the project -> pick the three easiest things to do that would still count as progress on the project, then start working on whichever of the three you think has the highest priority.

8. anxious when you think about starting -> make a list of the reasons that you think you are anxious about the project and write a short challenge in response to each reason (that points out any exaggeration or irrationality or distortion you can find in the fear), then do something that really helps you feel calm (e.g., take 20 extremely slow, extremely deep breaths), and when you’re done, immediately start on the project.

9. too distracted by your current environment to work effectively -> go to another room or a coffee shop or a corner (where there is nothing in your immediate field of view – try to face a wall) and put on headphones to listen to your preferred customized white noise (http://bit.ly/2nQIZuN) or instrumental music, then get started.

10. there isn’t enough time at this moment to make meaningful progress -> even a minor forward step is worthwhile, so if there is at least some small amount of progress you can make in the next ten minutes, do that; otherwise, schedule a few hours of free, uninterrupted time on your calendar to work on the project (picking a time during which you’re unlikely to be distracted by other things) and work on it then.

11. that you’re going to fail at the project -> make a list of the reasons you think you will fail, for write down one thing you can do to reduce the chance that you fail in that way, then make a list of all the evidence you can think of that implies you can succeed at the project, then get started on it.

12. it’s going to be unpleasant to work on it -> select for yourself an enjoyable reward activity that you’re going to allow yourself to do after you work on the project for an hour, then pick out whatever you think the easiest part of the project is, then go work on that easiest part for an hour to earn your reward.

The Setup

Person X and person Y are friends (or lovers or close work colleagues or whatever). Person X and Person Y happen to both feel the same way about each other (i.e., equal amounts of interest, affection, lust, respect, etc.)
Person X’s ideal is to make plans with person Y every two weeks, whereas person Y (who has a lower amount of free time, or less need for social interaction, or a project they are prioritizing, or whatever) wants to see person X every three weeks. Hence, they differ in their preferred time interval between hangouts.

So what happens? Approximately every two weeks, person X asks person Y to spend time together, which means that person X ends up doing essentially 100% of the invites (since three weeks rarely elapse without Y receiving an invitation from X, so Y almost never asks X to spend time together).†

In other words, Y wants to see X at only a moderately different rate than X wants to see Y (e.g., every three weeks instead of every two weeks) but ends up doing 0% of the invitations.

Person X then assumes that their relationship is imbalanced, and person Y must not feel the same way about the relationship that they do (but happens to be wrong). This can lead to awkwardness and relationship problems.

So how should X handle a situation where X ends up doing all of the inviting without Y reciprocating (but with Y agreeing to see X whenever X does send an invite)? We’ll assume in each of these cases that the people actually do spend time together when an invite is made (i.e., it is not a case of one person purposely ignoring another).

Some would suggest that, if both people simply ask each other their preferences, that can work best for the right types of people. Especially if both are on board with such explicitness of conversations about relationships, know the other person is on board too, and are confident that negative ramifications such as damaging awkwardness won’t result from that explicitness. In most cultures, the explicitness of the form “I’d prefer to see you every three weeks, how often do you want to see me?” is not the norm but certainly is normal in some subcultures.

Always Ask Strategy

The default strategy would be for person X to just persist in making the invitations every two weeks. One drawback is that person X might feel bad about always being the one to make invitations. Another drawback is that person Y might feel frustrated because they end up having to stall regularly on those invites to get their desired rate of spending time together, or else agree to see X on X’s preferred schedule rather than their own. Yet another drawback is that person X might be misreading the signs: maybe person Y just feels bad about saying no and so agrees to see X despite not wanting to? Person X knows that person Y is not reciprocating the invitations by sending invites back to X but doesn’t know the reason Y isn’t reciprocating.

Tit-For-Tat Strategy

Another strategy would be for person X to never make two invitations in a row. That means that person X would make the first invite (after two weeks), and then person Y would make the next invite (after three weeks) and then person X the next and so on. This isn’t a terrible solution since they would see each other every 2.5 weeks, which is a nice compromise. However, it does have a very major drawback, which is that if person Y forgets to make an invite back, then they’ll be stuck not seeing each other. In other words, it’s leaves room for mistakes, and could inadvertently destroy a great relationship. Hence far from ideal! This could be expanded to a “Tit-For-Two-Tats” strategy, where X makes two invites in a row but not more than two. But this actually is not really more robust in this scenario than Tit-For-Tat, since after two invites from X (which will definitely happen in this scenario), if Y then forgets to make the next one, no more invitations will occur.

Exponential Strategy

A third strategy would be for person X to double their invite time interval each time their last invite does not get an invite in return, and then reset back to their original invite time as soon as they get an invite back. (It doesn’t have to be double, of course, it could be X multiplying the invite time by any constant C>1.)

To see what I mean in more detail, consider the situation where X still prefers to see Y every two weeks, but now Y prefers to see X every ten weeks. First, person X makes an invite after two weeks, and they see each other at that time. Then since Y doesn’t reciprocate, X multiplies their time by two and so makes an invite after four weeks. Since Y again doesn’t reciprocate, X multiplies their time by two again and makes an invite after eight weeks. Since person Y’s desired time to see each other is ten weeks, then Y will end up making the next invite (since X wouldn’t make their next invite for 16 weeks). Now since a reciprocation occurs, X resets and so sends the next invite in 2 weeks, then the invite after that in 4 weeks, then eight weeks, etc.

There are some neat things about this strategy. First of all, it’s robust to mistakes since even if person Y accidentally forgets to make a reciprocation, person X will still end up reaching back out with an invite. Second, it does a pretty good job of balancing the desires of both parties by finding an average meeting frequency that is a compromise of both their ideals. The math gets a bit complicated†† but, suffice it to say, for most values of K (person X’s ideal timing between invites), C (the multiplier that X applies to their invite time interval with each unreciprocated invite), and N (person Y’s ideal timing between invites), the average time delay of the two people seeing each other will be fairly close to halfway between X’s and Y’s ideal time delay (to be more precise, it’s usually in the range of 25% of the way from K to N up to about 75% of the way from K to N).

Another neat thing about this strategy is that in the event that X has misjudged this situation, and Y actually doesn’t want to spend time together, Y gets pestered with exponentially decreasing frequency, meaning that the total annoyance Y experiences and the total embarrassment from non-reciprocation that X experiences are both limited.

One final point about the exponential strategy is that it works well if both parties use it even in an environment where forgetting is common (i.e., if 30% of the time people get distracted and so forget to make an invite).

Takeaways

In reality, one would, of course, not do calculations like this formally, and this simple model doesn’t include all relevant factors. But perhaps the Exponential Strategy can give us a decent intuition for how we might handle these sorts of situations in real life. When we want to see someone at regular intervals, and the person does agree to see us when we make invites but doesn’t make invites of their own, increase our invite time interval by some constant factor (say, 2) each time we have a non-reciprocation, but reset back to our most desired invite time interval whenever a reciprocation occurs.

† Note that this math works out even if X has some amount of noise in when they ask Y to spend time together, but as this noise gets large, the math eventually breaks down.

†† The average delay D that occurs between invites when person X is using the Exponential Strategy will be:
D = (N + K * sum_{t=0}^{M-1} C^t ) / (1 + M) where M =Ceiling[Log[N/K]/Log[C]]

• Switch windows within a single application (Command-` on Mac)
• Paste while using the formatting of the document you’re pasting into (Command-Option-Shift-V on Mac)
• Skip to next/previous email in the Gmail email client (k and j once you turn on Gmail key commands)
• Show desktop (F11 on Mac , Windows logo key  + D on PC)
• Switch to the last application (Command-Tab on Mac)
• Search your computer (Command-Spacebar on Mac)
• Jump to the right/left/top/bottom edge of text (Command + an arrow key on Mac)
• Jump over a word of text (Option + an arrow key on Mac)
• Next page (Spacebar on Mac)
• Search a website without going to it (type the beginning of the website name in the Chrome URL bar then, once you see it autocomplete correctly, hit tab, then you can search that website even though you haven’t gone to it yet!)
• Bookmark the current webpage (Command-D on Mac)

I created columns to indicate when I reached major life milestones, experienced major losses, began important relationships, finished books that had a big impact on me, etc. I update it a few times per year and try to include the best and worst things that have ever happened to me (i.e., successes, turning points, amazing experiences, trips, career shifts, and important realizations.)

I value this life events timeline for a few reasons:

1. A timeline tells your story. It’s neat to read through it, momentarily reliving your triumphs and important moments, but also, it gives you an objective perspective on what’s happened to you and how you got where you are today. It’s a linear, sequential view of your history, which feels very different from the episodic bits and pieces that come to mind when you mentally recall your past.

2. It pushes you to identify what the milestones in your life ACTUALLY were. While some will be obvious (e.g. graduating from school), others are subtler (e.g. a book you read that changed your perspective, having an important realization, or meeting a certain friend).

3. The longer I live, the easier it is to forget when important things happened, and in what sequence. I enjoy having my timeline as a reference. I predict that I’ll appreciate this aspect more and more as I get older. For instance, it’s neat to be able to see, at a glance, how long I’ve known different friends and how long I worked on various projects.

Imagine creating and maintaining a timeline to then look back at it decades from now and see your entire life’s history in front of you! If you have children or plan to, imagine using it to provide an overview of your life one day!

Here’s the template I use for my life timeline (on google spreadsheets). Feel free to make a copy and use it yourself if you like:

http://bit.ly/2fyP8r1

Helpful tips:

• The left-most column automatically calculates how many years ago an event occurred, so you can immediately see how long ago something was. 
• If you want to add more time (e.g., at the bottom), I recommend pasting the cells for an entire year at a time. If you paste one month at a time, the formula in the left-most column will get messed up.
• If you have trouble remembering when certain events occurred, searching your email and calendar can help narrow down dates.

TIME

– Stay in touch: if one of your closest friends doesn’t live nearby, try to either plan visits or video calls or both; otherwise, a long time can go by without interacting

– Hangout in groups: when strapped for time, try to schedule group events to see more of your friends more often (i.e., when you don’t have enough time to schedule one on one hangouts with everyone); that way, you don’t have too much time elapse before seeing friends

– Hangout alone: hang out one on one with your close friends at least some of the time (don’t get in the habit of only hanging out in groups, as it doesn’t usually facilitate the same depth of connection)

– Plan retreats: plan trips with your friends where you spend a couple of days straight (or more) together

– Create a community: introduce your closest friends to each other on multiple occasions (e.g., by inviting them out together or by hosting dinners or events) so that some of them become friends too, and ideally, so that you all find yourselves hanging out together

– Befriend their partners: take the time to really get to know their long term romantic partners, and make an effort to forge connections with them too

THOUGHTFULNESS

– Share nice thoughts: if you happen to think something nice about your friend at a random moment, text the nice thing to them

– Give compliments: at least occasionally tell your friends what you think is awesome about them (in detail if you can); they’ll likely really appreciate hearing it

– Express caring: at least occasionally tell your closest friends that you really care about them, in whatever way they would be most receptive to hearing it

– Give surprise presents: if you see something small at a store that you think a friend would love, buy it for them and surprise them with it

– Send cool stuff: if you see a cool thing online that you think your friend would love, send it to them

– Remember occasions: remember your friends’ birthdays and other important life events (e.g., put it as an event in your calendar to help you remember) and call them or write them a note when these events occur

– Reschedule quickly: if you have to cancel plans with a friend, then immediately reschedule the plan (rather than leaving them hanging open) and try to let your friend know about the cancelation with as much notice as possible (also: try not to cancel frequently)

– Remember on trips: when you go traveling, send your friends photos during or after

– Apologize: if you are irritable with a friend when he or she didn’t deserve it, or you did something unfair to a friend, admit it immediately and apologize; accepting full responsibility

– Explain how you work: if you have personal quirks or triggers that people who are close to you can benefit from knowing about, tell your close friends so that they can better model you and so that they know how to make you happier

– Forgive one-off mistakes: if a friend makes a mistake that you think they are unlikely to ever make again, just forgive them immediately

– Explain desired behavior: if a friend makes a mistake or does a thing that bothers you, and you think they might end up doing the thing again, tell them how the thing made you feel and how you would prefer they act in future situations like that one, then forgive them

– Avoid excessive negativity: try not to be TOO negative TOO often when the same friend is around, as it can inadvertently be a form of punishment for spending time together, which is not good for either of you

– Explain what you need: don’t assume your friends can read your mind about what you need or want; tell them if you need or want something

SUPPORT

– Reach out when they need it: if you know a friend is going through a hard time, reach out to them periodically (so they know you are there for them) rather than assuming they will reach out to you if they want your help

– Reach out when you need help: contact your friends when you need help with a difficult problem or need emotional support from them, don’t assume they will automatically know when you need their help

– Varied Support: if you are in a period where you’re frequently needing emotional support, try to spread that needed support among multiple friends if you can arrange things so that one doesn’t end up bearing all the weight of it

– Support the way they want: if a friend is telling you about a problem they are having, try to figure out if they desire empathy, validation, optimism, or problem-solving, and give them whichever of these they actually came to you for (rather than what YOU would want to be given in that situation)

– Delay judgment: if your friend does something that you have a judgmental reaction to, try to delay that reaction and take the time to ask questions to understand WHY your friend did that thing (the more you can relate to their reasons, the less judgmental you are likely to be)

– Express concern: gently express concern when your friend tells you about something they are doing that seems like it could be harmful or self-destructive (since encouraging harmful behavior is a harmful form of support, and harsh judgment is usually not helpful and may cause your friend not to tell you about those sorts of things in the future)

The high level components necessary for accomplishment in tennis are the same as they are in nearly every field. Accomplishment relies on the following factors:

1. Ambition. While it is possible to accomplish things that you don’t set out to achieve, when that occurs it is usually just due to luck. Setting something as your goal is the first step towards accomplishing it. If we have low ambitions, we are unlikely to achieve great things.
2. Talent. Most accomplishments require a certain starting level of skills relevant to the accomplishment. To be become a great singer, it helps to have good pitch. To be a great investor, it helps to have a personality that allows you to act calmly when others are afraid. While abilities can be honed with training, your current level of talent represents your starting point in the accomplishment race. If you start too far behind, even really good training may not get you to where you need to be.
3. Reasoning. The path towards almost every major accomplishment involves making difficult decisions. Which job should you take? Which helpful books should you read? Who should you make an effort to get to know? Which skills should you work to hone? Which training methods should you apply? The superpower of being able to reliably answer these kinds of questions will make your accomplishment much more likely. One very bad decision early on may lead you to failure.
4. Time. Most big accomplishments require a very large investment of time. You are not going to be able to invent a better type of microchip without first learning a lot about computers, electrical engineering, and materials science. This will take years.
5. Resources. These can be both physical (e.g. money) or social (e.g. knowing the right people to help you achieve your goal). If you have an incredible business idea, but don’t have the money to fund it, and can’t get in contact with someone who will fund it for you, you’re out of luck. A strong social network can make achievement much easier. It often takes the well-coordinated effort of many people to achieve great things. There may even be a person out there whose advice or help is exactly what you need for success. And sometimes involving others in our projects can make up for our own lack of talent, lack of money, or lack of time.

Any of these five factors can prevent you from accomplishing great things. If your goals are unambitious, your achievement will probably be low. If you are lacking in relevant talent, you’re unlikely to ever achieve great heights of ability. If your reasoning is poor, you’ll be likely to make bad decisions related to how to achieve your goals. If you don’t put enough time into achievement, you’ll probably not accomplish very much. And many goals require some money, or the help of others, and without either of these, your ambitions may not get off the ground.

Flipping this analysis around, we see that we need to make sure that we have these five factors in place if we are going to have the best chance of accomplishing what we hope to. Sure, we might get lucky, and not need them all. Maybe we’ll win the lotto and so won’t need to worry about physical resources anymore, or maybe our bad reasoning will happen to not harm our project. But if we want to maximize our chance of success, we should have sufficient ambition, talent, reasoning skills, time investment, and physical/social resources. Whichever of these is our weakest point is likely what we should focus on improving. We can consider how we can try to affect each of these factors:

1. Ambition may be hard to change. You simply may not care about accomplishing much. But reflecting on what you would like to complete before your die may make you realize that you do in fact care about achieving certain goals.
2. Your current level of talent is fixed, but you can make up for a lack of it by involving other people whose talents complement your own, and by reasoning about how to improve your skills and then investing sufficient time into doing so.
3. Reasoning can be honed with practice.
4. Time simply needs to be invested. But reasoning can help you make your time more productive and efficient, and involving others in your goals lets you pool your time with theirs. If at your current rate of time investment, your goals may take decades to achieve, you may need to start taking time away from something else.
5. If you don’t have the money or social network required to complete your goals, that may be solvable with further time investment. You may need to take a job to make the required money, and devote time to building new social contacts that are relevant to what you’d like to achieve. For instance, you can start introducing yourself to more people at places where those who are likely to be helpful are likely to be.

If you want to maximize your chance of accomplishing your goals, figure out which of these five factors is your weakest point, and fix it. Then, if necessary, repeat.

To figure out how much we value our time we can ask ourselves simple questions, such as, “How much would I have to get paid to be willing to do an hour of work now?” The answer we give will not always be the same from day-to-day, or even from hour to hour. On vacation we might be in a mindset where we find work more unappealing, and so might require a higher pay. On the other hand, in times when we are strapped for cash, we might be willing to accept less pay. Our required monetary reward will also depend on how pleasurable or displeasurable we expect the work to be. And if we’ve just been working for five hours, we might require more pay for the next hour than we did for each of the last five.

Let’s consider how we might actually apply this concept of placing a monetary value on our time. Suppose that a store is giving out free mugs, but to get one, you have to wait for 10 minutes in line. Ask yourself, “How much money would a person have to pay me now to wait for ten minutes in that line on his behalf?” Suppose that you decide that you’d be willing to do this waiting for no less than $5. That means that if someone said they would pay you only $4.95 to stand in line for them, you’d turn down the offer. Now, ask yourself, “In the future, would I rather have $5 or one of these mugs they are handing out?” Or, similarly, try “Would I be willing to spend $5 now to buy one of these mugs?” If the answer is that you’d prefer to have $5 than a mug then it probably doesn’t make sense to wait in the line. In this case, you are assigning that 10 minutes of time waiting in line a value equivalent to $5, but the mug is worth less than that dollar amount to you. Put another way, you would be willing to wait in that line for $5, but if you did so, you wouldn’t actually want to buy the mug with the $5 you earned! It is reasonable therefore to think of the waiting in line as being more costly for you than the mug is valuable to you. On the other hand, if you’d rather have the mug than the $5, in that case it likely would make sense to wait in the line.

Incidentally, it may be important to frame the question as “Would I spend $5 to buy that mug if I could?” rather than “Would I sell that mug for $5 if I already had it?” The problem with the latter is that research has shown that we tend to be biased to prefer items that we currently possess to ones that we don’t yet have. So, if imagining owning the mug is enough to trigger this bias, the latter question could lead to distorted answers.

This technique of placing a monetary value on our time is particularly useful in situations where something is being offered for free, since people often sacrifice an unreasonably large amount to receive free items. Perhaps genuine pleasure is created just from knowing that you got something for free, which helps compensate for such sacrifices. But nonetheless, one should be cautious about overacting to the word “free”, which can certainly snag us with its large psychological appeal.

To consider another example, suppose that you’re trying to decide whether you should drive an extra 15 minutes each way to go to the cheaper grocery store rather than the pricier one (we’ll assume, in this case, that the two stores have equally good products). The question to then ask yourself is, “How much would I have to be paid to drive for a total of 30 minutes on someone else’s behalf?” If the answer is $10, then ask yourself, “How much do I expect to save by going to the cheap store?” If the answer is more than $10, then it probably makes sense to drive the extra distance. If the answer is less than $10, it probably doesn’t make sense.

Our brains are not necessarily going to make sensible decisions unless we explicitly reason using this process. For instance, one study showed that people said they were willing to drive a certain extra distance to save a small amount of money on small purchases, but not on large purchases, even when the dollar amount saved was equivalent in the two cases. If being paid $10 is worth 30 extra minutes of driving to you, it should be worth it to drive that 30 extra minutes to save $10 whether you are then going to be spending $20 or $20,000 at your destination.

When you are making a decision involving sacrificing your time, it can be well worth it to ask yourself, “How much would someone have to pay me to use my time in this way?” Then, ask yourself, “How much would I be willing to pay to be given what my sacrifice of time is getting me?” If the former is bigger than the latter, you should seriously consider not using your time in that manner.