# Applied Murphyjitsu Meditation

*Expanded and generalized version of* [*this shortform*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eukutrwGBPutoQoyM/alice-blair-s-shortform?commentId=riwHkC6KnMpYpLFro)

Motivation: Typing Fast
=======================

Part of my writing process involves getting words out of my head and into a text editor as quickly as I can manage. Sometimes this involves [Loom](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bxt7uCiHam4QXrQAA/cyborgism#Becoming_a_Cyborg), but most of the time it is just good old fashion [babbling](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/pC6DYFLPMTCbEwH8W/p/i42Dfoh4HtsCAfXxL) and brainstorming. When I'm doing this, I'm trying to use the text editor as extra working memory/RAM/reasoning tokens/etc. so that I can use my actual brain's working memory to hold the fuzzy thoughts that lie in between those I can put into words. 

Thus, I have put [some](https://colemak.com/) [substantial](https://kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/) [effort](https://www.charachorder.com/products/cc2) into trying to type fast and with minimal long-term cognitive overhead. 

When I'm trying to practice typing, learn a new layout, or learn a whole new typing device, I tend to apply a technique that lies somewhere in between mindfulness meditation and [Murphyjitsu](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Htjbj8ystqc2zLtMX/murphyjitsu-an-inner-simulator-algorithm). The steps are:

1.  Start a [typing test](https://monkeytype.com/) (can be better with an [adversarial test](https://www.keybr.com/)) and try to go for as much speed as you can manage while still being able to do steps 2 and 3.
2.  Get into a flow state. This may take a few minutes, maybe more if you haven't done much typing testing of this form. For me, It feels like gaining a bit of mental breathing room, like my brain has settled into 'typing mode' and now I can type the words that pop up on my screen more or less automatically.
    1.  This shouldn't feel like losing focus, and in fact losing focus is if anything more of a risk at this stage. There is a gentle balance here between loosening up into a flow state and continuing to focus hard on being good at the test, and it is easy to do too much of either for this trick to work. It is much more like the mindfulness meditation experience of having background attention on several things at once than it is like spacing out. Many times I've gotten [semantic satiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation) or distraction with all the things passing across my vision, and suddenly I'm missing every other character because I'm out of the flow state.
3.  With the extra mental breathing room from step 2, you can divert some attention to the question "what mistake am I going to make next?" and to the task "let's not make that mistake". Things these could feel like:
    1.  "On this layout, `n` is where I'm used to `j` being, so I pretty consistently press `n` when I want `j`. I will pay special attention to words with `j` in them until I get this fixed."
    2.  "On this device, it's anti-ergonomic to press `h` and `f` in sequence, and I keep slowing down and making mistakes on words like `halfhearted` or `faithful`. I'll explicitly practice the skill of reliably doing that quickly."
    3.  "This layout makes it really fun and convenient to type words containing `rst`, but I sometimes get too excited and turn `forest` into `forst` or `bars` into `barst`. I'm going to try and cultivate a more detailed concept boundary that only includes the correct fun and convenient things and not the false positives."
    4.  "My hand slipped/is weirdly placed/is tired, this seems like it is about to cause a mistake, but now that I'm aware of it I'll just decide to not do that."

When I get into this flow, I'm once again using all of my mental energy, but my accuracy scores go up while maintaining similar speeds, and these improvements carry over to my less attentive, routine typing to some extent. This feels somewhat like (and goes well with[^y7oeo2j745p]) [Tuning Your Motor Cortex](http://bewelltuned.com/tune_your_motor_cortex) in that it is smoothing out the noise and messiness that your muscle outputs face, and getting them to be closer to optimally doing your task at hand. 

Generalizations
===============

The more general pattern for doing Applied Murphyjitsu Meditation on a Thing is:

1.  **Get Into a Flow State:** Do the Thing well enough to where you have some mental bandwidth to spare in the background. For tasks with longer feedback loops, it can be okay to only sometimes have this background awareness, and may be more feasible in highly mentally demanding tasks.
2.  **Predict Failures and Stop Them: L**ook ahead, armed with the knowledge of places you have made mistakes and missteps before, and find places where you may make them again. Adjust your flow state so that it doesn't do that anymore, not just this time before it happens, but in general. Leverage the fact that verifying whether an action is good is easier than generating good ones from scratch to slowly tune your action generator without having to try and rewrite it from scratch.

Specializations
===============

What can you do with this general pattern?

*   General Athletic/Muscular Things:
    *   What part of my running form will degrade and when?
    *   What literal missteps will I make in this dance?
*   Social Interaction:
    *   Am I about to make a careless/offensive/harsh comment about something?
    *   Am I actually meeting the audience at their point of view?
*   Thinking:
    *   Am I about to [think something slowly](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rYq6joCrZ8m62m7ej/how-could-i-have-thought-that-faster)?
    *   Do I already know where this train of thought is going?
        *   If I do, is it going somewhere wrong?
*   Most Skill Learning with Quick Enough Feedback Loops:
    *   Music
    *   Drawing
    *   Speed chess[^ekhqlte6rpd]
    *   That One Skill You've Been Meaning To Learn 

[^y7oeo2j745p]: This type of Tuning is another layer of computation on top of the rest of this, and shouldn't be done until you get the rest down or you're practiced enough at that type of Tuning to where it is somewhat automatic.  

[^ekhqlte6rpd]: Relatedly, it has been said that one bit of opportunely timed external information is enough to decide a chess game, at the highest levels of competition, since there is a limited time budget to think, and knowing what pivotal move to prioritize with that thinking time can be critical.