Hammertime Club: November 2021

Over in the Hammertime: Bug Hunt! thread, @rperce and @felixm have been posting about Hammertime - “Thirty days of instrumental rationality practice” from the LessWrong site, and I’ve been following their progress with great interest. It looks like an awesome way to find and fix bugs in your life.

“In Hammertime, we will practice 10 Hammers over 30 days. Each exercise is scalable from a half hour to an entire day. … There will be three cycles of 10 days each, practicing each technique a total of three times. The first cycle will cover basics and solve bugs at the life-hack level. The second cycle will reinforce the technique, cover variations and generalizations, and solve tougher challenges. The third cycle will build fluid compound movements out of multiple core techniques.” – from “Hammertime Schedule” in Hammertime Day 1: Bug Hunt

So I thought, let’s do a Hammertime Club! It’s like a book club - a group of people working through the Hammertime exercises at roughly the same rate, so that we can (optionally!) share our progress, help each other through rough patches, and keep ourselves motivated to finish the program.

I’m modelling it on @dreev’s Book Club for Milkman’s How to Change, so we’ll have a private forum area with the price of admission being a Beeminder goal. The goal should:

  • be public (the datapoints and fine print can be private)
  • start on 1 November
  • ideally have a rate of 1 per day - i.e., a commitment to do one Hammertime Day each day; however if you feel you need to take it more slowly, choose your own rate

The rate for my own goal is 1 per day. Each day in November, I’ll start a new topic in our private forum space for the appropriate Hammertime Day, and we can post our updates / questions / comments there. It will not be mandatory for every participant to post! You won’t need to share anything that you’re not comfortable sharing.

So, if you’d like to be part of this, create a Beeminder goal (remember to give it an initial flat spot so that it starts on 1 November) and post your goal’s link here. I’ll then add you to the private forum area.

I suspect we may actually want a break after each set of 10 days, to practice the new techniques and habits that we’ve set up so far before going further, but we won’t need to decide on that straight away.

If anyone has any suggestions for improving my Hammertime Club ideas, please reply! :smiley:


Links for members:

5 Likes

Thanks! I’ve been waiting for this since it was mentioned in… a beemail I think?

I’ve chosen a slightly different commitment rate but here we go: hammertime | oguzhanogreden/hammertime goal page

1 Like

I’m obviously already a good handful of days in, but I’d love to be in the club! Setting up something like this is something I wanted to do from the start :slight_smile:

  • Robert Perce
2 Likes

Count me in! hammertime | johnmarkos/hammertime goal page

1 Like

I’m in! hammer | talg/hammer goal page

1 Like

hammertime | pjh/hammertime goal page

1 Like

Not sure I’ve got the idea down yet, but want to read more and try.

2 Likes

It’s great to see this much interest! I’m just setting up the private area today with a couple of introductory posts and I’ll give you all access to it tomorrow!

1 Like

Intrigued by what I’ve just skim read and think it’s worth a deeper dive: hammertime | k1rsty/hammertime goal page

1 Like

I’m going to keep going on my OG thread for now, but here’s my goal for the club: hammerclub | rperce/hammerclub goal page

For the days i’ve already done once we start my +1 will be rereading, reflecting, and maybe redoing the days, using the experience and ideas of the rest of the club to do it again but better!

2 Likes

Oh, convenient, I was actually going to make a goal to practice these things anyway:

1 Like

Everyone who’s posted their goal here so far should now have access to the Hammertime Private Club category - tell me if you don’t. It IS actually private now - it wasn’t originally. :scream: :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Have a look at its About page, which has some guidelines, and the Day 0 page with some ideas for preparation we can do this month.

New members are still welcome so post your goals here if you’d like to join us!

4 Likes

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and this provided the necessary extra push - I’m in!

1 Like

@alys Thanks for setting this up. Could you add me, please? I will continue posting in rperce’s thread, but I would love to read about other people’s experiences with the challenge.

Hi, would like to join in please. Thanks

@clivemeister @felixm @bizzle You have access to the private category now. Welcome!

2 Likes

I’m intrigued, so here’s my hat in the ring.

1 Like

I’m in too hammertime | derecognize/hammertime goal page

@adamwolf @derecognize and @cthulhucultist (love that name!) - you have access now. link

1 Like