My oldest daughter has gotten into the habit of chewing her fingernails, and is endeavoring to quit. Helping her through this and discussing it with her gave me reason to think a lot about habits in general.

When a little stream of water first starts running across the flat plains, its course would be pretty easy to change. Dig a little here, put a few rocks there, and bam – stream moves in a different direction. But give it a few thousand years to erode the land, carving it down deeper and deeper, and now changing the course of that river would take monumental effort.

That’s what habits are. Whether good or bad, when they start they’re easy to change. But over time they change you, altering the landscape of who you are. In time, they’re nigh-unchangeable.

That means they’re worth thinking about early. That’s why I make myself write every day, even if some days I don’t think I have anything worthwhile to say. I’m making this river change me.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth gets between the Moon and the Sun. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon gets between the Earth and the Sun. A terrestrial eclipse occurs when the Earth gets between you and the Sun. Happens once per 24 hours. An atmospheric eclipse occurs when an asteroid gets between…

Little Known Types Of Eclipse — Slate Star Codex

I have a weird fascination with demographics. I like thinking about how many people of a certain subset might exist in a larger population, and what kinds of factors might go into determining that.

(I think I mentioned I was geeky, so I hope you weren’t waiting for this blog to get cool.)

For example: What is the number of people per 10,000 that have a 50% or greater overlap in musical taste as me? What percentage of people in a given population would voluntarily sign up for a seminar I ran?

Being in sales taught me that success is just a matter of population size. If you’re looking for three sales, they’re out there – you just have to figure out how many times you have to hear “No” before you get to the “Yes.” What’s the minimum population needed for your goals?

It’s so, so easy to let “lifestyle creep” get the better of you. You make a little more money, but suddenly you have a few more expenditures, and the end result is the same. Too many people get caught on that treadmill.

There are two things that I can think of that will help:

1. Don’t be motivated by stuff. Think about your life right now – are you, for the most part, happy? Assuming you are, then if I doubled your yearly income, you could presumably put all the excess into savings and still be exactly as happy. Maybe even a little more so because you’d have the comfort of knowing you had a greater safety net. Surely you wouldn’t be less happy just because you weren’t spending that money – after all, you’re happy now and you don’t even have that theoretical extra money. Keep this mindset, and as your income improves, keep your expenditures.
2. Keep a small circle. We’re so easily tricked by things like relative wealth and status. Fancy toys are cool because other people have them; or because we can show them off to people that don’t. But if you only have a small circle of trusted, wise people who don’t care about what car you drive, you’re less motivated by shiny toys.

What other mental exercises can you think of to help you stop lifestyle creep?

(Epistemic status: Unsure on details) I. There is a national shortage of buspirone. Buspirone is a 5HT-1 agonist used to control anxiety. Unlike most psychiatric drugs, it’s in a class of its own – there are no other sole 5HT-1 agonists on the market. It’s not a very strong medication, but it’s safe, it’s non-addictive,…

Buspirone Shortage In Healthcaristan SSR — Slate Star Codex