Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Support Structures for Naturalist Study, published by LoganStrohl on May 15, 2023 on LessWrong.

It can be hard to stay engaged with a project that may last months, especially when you’re working on your own. In addition to meeting with my students every couple of weeks, and sometimes pairing them up with other students, there are five kinds of independent practices I often recommend to support consistent progress over the course of a naturalist study.

Some of the support structures tend to be more important than others, and it’s critical to find a balance among them that works well for you.

Undirected Time

Naturalism involves learning new ways to perceive, not just updating explicit beliefs, so it relies extensively on background processing.

That means it’s crucial to make space for shower thoughts. It’s crucial to make time for daydreaming, for mind-wandering, for the kinds of things your thoughts do when you’re neither trying to do anything in particular with them, nor having them directed by an external force (such as a book, conversation, or TV show).

The busier you are, the more important it will probably be to create undirected time in your daily life while undertaking a naturalist study. You don’t actually have to schedule fifteen minutes each day to stare at a blank wall (although that’s a perfectly good way to go about this if it’s what you want to do); most people find that there is some existing part of their ordinary routine that can be modified to create more space for daydreaming. Some people who listen to a podcast during their morning commute choose to go without the podcast instead. Some people replace post-lunch Reddit scrolling with a short walk or a semi-nap. Anything that gives you a little more space to let your mind wander could do the trick.

Field Work

Field work is anything you do to observe experiences in their natural habitats. If you’re studying something that shows up while writing code as part of your job, field work happens on the clock, mostly without breaking the normal flow of your coding process.

In general, successful field work requires two components: Opportunities to encounter fulcrum experiences, and a plan for how to observe them when they happen. If you’re studying interpersonal dynamics but you never actually interact with other people, you’re not giving yourself any opportunities to observe. If you encounter plenty of opportunities but haven’t planned ahead to notice when they happen, you probably won’t make many new observations.

“Undirected time” and “field work” are the two most important structures in naturalism. Without them, there is no study. A successful study doesn’t necessarily require anything besides a plan to observe at the right times, and enough processing space to integrate observations.

Field Notes

“Field notes” means any method of recording observations that happen in the field.

Some people try to record a brief note whenever they make a marking gesture, either in a notebook, as a voice memo, or in a text chat to themselves. Technically, a tally kept on a counter ring is a kind of field note.

Another approach to field notes is daily reviews or journaling. Rather than taking notes on your experiences as they happen, you look back over your day and write down a little of what you remember about what you noticed. This method is farther removed from the observations, so key details sometimes get lost; but it can also be a lot easier for people who don’t want the flow of their activities interrupted.

I often use both of these approaches at once: I make three-to-five-word notes in the field, and then I expand on them a little during daily reviews.

Lab Work

Lab work is any part of your study that happens under artificially designed circumstances.

There’s a continuum from field work to lab work. If you create fulc...