[TeMPOraL]

Would be nice if there was an escape hatch here. Definitely better than the depressing thought I had, which is - to put in AI/tech terminology - that I'm already past my pre-training window (childhood / period of high neuroplasticity) and it's too late for me to fix my low prompt adherence (ability to set up rules for myself and stick to them, not necessarily via a Markdown file).

[acessoproibido]

You can change your personality at any point in time, you don't even need psychedelics for it, just some good old fashioned habits

As long as you are still drawing breath it's never too late bud

[TeMPOraL]

But that's what I mean. I'm pretty much clinically incapable of intentionally forming and maintaining habits. And I have a sinking feeling that it's something you either win or lose at in the genetic lottery at time of conception, or at best something you can develop in early life. That's what I meant by "being past my pre-training phase and being stuck with poor prompt adherence".

[acessoproibido]

I used to be like you but a couple of years ago something clicked and I was able to build a bunch of extremely life changing habits - it took a long while but looking back I'm like a different person. I couldn't really say what led to this change though, it wasn't like this "one weird trick" or something. That being said I think "Tao of Puh" is a great self-help book

[kortex]

I can relate. It's definitely possible, but you have to really want it, and it takes a lot of work.

You need cybernetics (as in the feedback loop, the habit that monitors the process of adding habits). Meditate and/or journal. Therapy is also great. There are tracking apps that may help. Some folks really like habitica/habit rpg.

You also need operant conditioning: you need a stimulus/trigger, and you need a reward. Could be as simple as letting yourself have a piece of candy.

Anything that enhances neuroplasticity helps: exercise, learning, eat/sleep right, novelty, adhd meds if that's something you need, psychedelics can help if used carefully.

I'm hardly any good at it myself but it's been some progress.

[TeMPOraL]

Right. I know about all these things (but thanks for listing them!) as I've been struggling with it for nearly two decades, with little progress to show.

I keep gravitating to the term, "prompt adherence", because it feels like it describes the root meta-problem I have: I can set up a system, but I can't seem to get myself to follow it for more than a few days - including especially a system to set up and maintain systems. I feel that if I could crack that, set up this "habit that monitors the process of adding habits" and actually stick to it long-term, I could brute-force my way out of every other problem.

Alas.

[Lalabadie]

If it's any help, one of the statements that stuck with me the most about "doing the thing" is from Amy Hoy:

> You know perfectly well how to achieve things without motivation.[1]

I'll also note that I'm a firm believer in removing the mental load of fake desires: If you think you want the result, but you don't actually want to do the process to get to the result, you should free yourself and stop assuming you want the result at all. Forcing that separation frees up energy and mental space for moving towards the few things you want enough.

1: https://stackingthebricks.com/how-do-you-stay-motivated-when...

[keybored]

> I keep gravitating to the term, "prompt adherence", because it feels like it describes the root meta-problem I have: I can set up a system, but I can't seem to get myself to follow it for more than a few days - including especially a system to set up and maintain systems. I feel that if I could crack that, set up this "habit that monitors the process of adding habits" and actually stick to it long-term, I could brute-force my way out of every other problem.

Executive function.

[gmadsen]

For what it’s worth, I’ve fallen into the trap of building an “ideal” system that I don’t use. Whether that’s a personal knowledge db , automations for tracking habits, etc.

The thing I’ve learned is for a new habit, it should have really really minimal maintenance and minimal new skill sets above the actual habit. Start with pen and paper, and make small optimizations over time. Only once you have engrained the habit of doing the thing, should you worry about optimizing it

[edmundsauto]

I've felt this way all my life. I was recently tested/diagnosed in mid-life with ADHD. It explains so much of my life experience so far.

[Chris2048]

sane. I wonder if AI would be the key to maintaining complex memory/data (with implied directives).

Any notes system gets too large, and hence too complex as Is have to check a large dataset frequently. An AI could perhaps do that though..

[metadat]

You appear to have successfully formed the habit of posting on Hacker News frequently, isn't this a starting place? :)

[TeMPOraL]

Touché.

Maybe instead of fighting it, I should build on it. Thanks!

[breakpointalpha]

I thought the same thing about myself until I read Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. Changed my mental model for what habits really are and how to engineer habitual change. I immediately started flossing and haven't quit in the three years since reading. It's very worth reading because there are concrete, research backed frameworks for rewiring habits.

[joquarky]

As I enter my 50s, I've had to start consciously stopping to make notes for everything.

It's a bit fascinating/unnerving to see similarities between these tools and my own context limits and that they have similar workarounds.

[heavyset_go]

The brain remains plastic for life, and if you're insane about it, there are entire classes of drugs that induce BDNF production in various parts of the brain.

[fmbb]

The agents are also not able to set up their own rules. Humans can mutate their souls back to whatever at will.

[TeMPOraL]

They can if given write access to "SOUL.md" (or "AGENT.md" or ".cursor" or whatever).

It's actually one of the "secret tricks" from last year, that seems to have been forgotten now that people can "afford"[0] running dozens of agents in parallel. Before everyone's focus shifted from single-agent performance to orchestration, one power move was to allow and encourage the agent to edit its own prompt/guidelines file during the agentic session, so over time and many sessions, the prompt will become tuned to both LLM's idiosyncrasies and your own expectations. This was in addition to having the agent maintain a TODO list and a "memory" file, both of which eventually became standard parts of agentic runtimes.

--

[0] - Thanks to heavy subsidizing, at least.

[keybored]

What’s the plasticity of thinking of yourself as a machine.