[lobocinza]

So what are your goals?

1 - Wake up happy each day?

2 - Do not use social media?

3 - Sleep 8 hours per day?

4 - Walk 3000 steps per day?

5 - I fail to see how a personality test can measure mental clarity? Even if they aren't useless constructs. Thought "core self-evalutions" if taken regularly can be a good indicator of issue.

6 - Not sure what are you measuring. Work memory?

7 - "Available crystallized intelligence". Isn't this an oxymoron?

8 - Only if our bodies didn't show signs of aging.

[sinenomine]

My goals, as I have already said, are pretty obvious: find a good set of lifestyle changes (including exercise types and patterns, diet, sleep conditions, outdoor activities, supplements and drugs, but also including choice of country & city to live in), so these metrics are optimized in good direction, and I feel better. I tried less systemic approach and it didn't work for me. In my impression our genetic makeup tends to make us choose a complementary sort of environment, so it all (behavior, health, mood) comes to equilibrium and balances out - it's really hard to make consistent progress when you are inside such perverse equilibrium. Thus the need for heavy-handed hard measurement approach.

1. Mood diaries are more about trends and avoiding depressive episodes, it's better to rate your mood in the evening so your professional life is included in the rating. For example if your manager stresses you out on your job, you may not think about it in the moment, but it may show on your mood diary as a week-scale trend.

2. Completely avoiding social media is an unattainable goal, thus usage should be limited to 0.5-1.0 hr.

3. Yes, and sleep well, which is quite hard.

4. 3000 is too little, I'd aim to 5000-10000.

5. There are various tests, I'm specifically interested in IQ-test https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/FSIQ/ but it's more or less interchangeable with N-back. IQ is a scary number, but it's a good barometer for how good you really feel. A difference between "a good day" and a "bad day" is clearly seen on such test.

6. Working memory and attention, yes. These are degraded by lack of sleep & stress & aging.

7. Again, lack of sleep & stress & aging tends to degrade active vocabulary, in my case.

8. Of course we age, but this aging process is malleable: some interventions are shown to decrease (!) the value of various aging clocks. Yes, the aging clocks themselves are imperfect, but this decrease is often correlated with subjective & objective improvements on other axes.

If you accept fundamentally mechanistic view of nature, biology and ourselves, you might as well position yourself to reap the benefits.

[lobocinza]

> If you accept fundamentally mechanistic view of nature, biology and ourselves, you might as well position yourself to reap the benefits.

You're missing my point. What I deny is the usefulness of presented frameworks and tools. But it's fine if it's working for you and can work for others.