TwentyTwentyOneDan

[jlt]

I only skimmed through the paper, but I didn't see anything suggesting that publicly announcing goals is counterproductive. In fact the main idea of the paper seems that to reach a goal, the best is to make precise plans (what I will do, how and when).

paper.JPG (229.14 KiB) Viewed 71704 times

[Boidhre]

Not a psychologist (and not going to read papers behind academic paywalls), so I'm finding it hard to get any publicly accessible stuff: this non-academic article jives with what psychologists were saying to me: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... ell-anyone (It's not an academic source though)

Short version from my understanding and what I've been told by professionals: In studies they seem to find that people do better at tasks/goals when they don't or can't announce their intentions and can only publicly show anything by doing task/goal related activity. What is suggested (and seen in experiments) is that if you grab a bunch of go players who intend to read Tesuji by Davies, the ones who tell people they are going to do that would less likely to read it than the ones who didn't tell anyone about it. The theory I heard is that if I say "I'm going to read Tesuji" and I get responses from people about that, this seems to partially fulfill the want/need to read the book. So the advice is talk about you have done and are currently doing rather than to talk about future tasks or goals yet to be completed. So have 1 dan as a goal but talk about what you're currently doing in games, life and death training etc not the desired end goal. Get praise/reinforcement for what you're doing not for something you haven't done yet.

Someone with some training in applied psychology/psychology may be be able to correct me here, expand on it or clarify, I can only give you it from a patient perspective.

[Bill Spight]

Not a psychologist (and not going to read papers behind academic paywalls), so I'm finding it hard to get any publicly accessible stuff: this non-academic article jives with what psychologists were saying to me: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... ell-anyone (It's not an academic source though)

Short version from my understanding and what I've been told by professionals: In studies they seem to find that people do better at tasks/goals when they don't or can't announce their intentions and can only publicly show anything by doing task/goal related activity. What is suggested (and seen in experiments) is that if you grab a bunch of go players who intend to read Tesuji by Davies, the ones who tell people they are going to do that would less likely to read it than the ones who didn't tell anyone about it. The theory I heard is that if I say "I'm going to read Tesuji" and I get responses from people about that, this seems to partially fulfill the want/need to read the book. So the advice is talk about you have done and are currently doing rather than to talk about future tasks or goals yet to be completed. So have 1 dan as a goal but talk about what you're currently doing in games, life and death training etc not the desired end goal. Get praise/reinforcement for what you're doing not for something you haven't done yet.

This is rather different from the Psychology Today article. It is about identity goals, which depend socially upon how people regard you. The point is that if you tell someone you know that you intend to become a go player, for example, that person starts to regard you as a go player, and you have less to do to become a go player as an identity (i.e., in other people's eyes), so you do less towards becoming a go player. That does not work if you tell another go player that you intend to become a dan player. The other player will not think of you as a dan player. And if, when you announce that goal, you are a DDK, the most polite response is likely to be, "That's nice. Good luck."

But announcing an action goal is different. I don't know about the research, but IMX if you tell someone who is supportive, they are likely to help you or encourage you to meet that goal.

[Boidhre]

This is rather different from the Psychology Today article. It is about identity goals, which depend socially upon how people regard you. The point is that if you tell someone you know that you intend to become a go player, for example, that person starts to regard you as a go player, and you have less to do to become a go player as an identity (i.e., in other people's eyes), so you do less towards becoming a go player. That does not work if you tell another go player that you intend to become a dan player. The other player will not think of you as a dan player. And if, when you announce that goal, you are a DDK, the most polite response is likely to be, "That's nice. Good luck."

But announcing an action goal is different. I don't know about the research, but IMX if you tell someone who is supportive, they are likely to help you or encourage you to meet that goal.

I can't find a public copy of the paper by that researcher that I remember from years back but found a summation of part of it from a non-academic source:

In one study, law students were asked to fill out a questionnaire that measured their commitment to making the most of their educational opportunities. Those whose answers indicated a high level of commitment to becoming lawyers were then split into two groups. For the first group, an experimenter looked at each participant’s questionnaire and then asked them to confirm that the answer they circled was the one they had intended. The second group, however, dropped their questionnaires into a box and understood their responses were anonymous.

After that, both groups were given 45 minutes to work on legal cases. The first group, whose answers had been acknowledged, spent less time working on the cases than the second group, whose answers were anonymous.

Researchers concluded that when someone notices your identity goal, that social recognition is a reward that may cause you to reduce your efforts. So in this case, the students who stated they were committed to becoming lawyers had already achieved that identity in their mind thanks to the experimenter’s acknowledgment of their answers.

Blog source: https://blog.trello.com/science-backed- ... your-goals (The rest is less interesting).

I think you can argue by analogy that seeking to become a strong go player is a similar form of goal as seeking to become a particular profession and someone could get social recognition of their desire to be a strong go player by talking about it and it being detrimental to their motivation. I *think* the split is more based here on social recognition/feedback than task type necessarily. Whether being seen to be working hard is a significant element to the person or not. I don't know, I'm mostly having to work backwards from getting the practical explanations from psychologists rather than the theory/experiment side. I was told by a few different ones that talking about my intentions to do X may have a negative effect on my motivation to do X if I can get praise or recognition for merely saying I'll do it rather than showing I'm doing it or that I have done it. The brain seems to react similarly to praise for any of these apparently.

[jlt]

The analogue of "I want to become a dan player" is not "I want to become a lawyer" but "both of us are law students, and I want to be among the top 10%".

[Boidhre]

The analogue of "I want to become a dan player" is not "I want to become a lawyer" but "both of us are law students, and I want to be among the top 10%".

The analogy is the the identity people attach to being a high performing student in class or part of a profession is similar to the identity they're attaching to being a strong go player. Being seen to be the that type of person or feeling that they are the kind of person who should be such. The idea of being in the top of your class and being part of a profession are extremely similar in terms of having social recognition as a major component of them for many people (i.e. we want people to notice and know that we are such). The idea being getting social recognition of such early being possibly demotivational for some people. If part of someone's reason to reach a particular rank in go is getting recognition from others about it then I can see how this work on identity goals might be relevant here. Similar to how a law student who is doing well because they find the subject intrinsically interesting may not be swayed in either direction by being told they are close to the top of their class.

shrugs

I can easily buy that talking about some kinds of goals is detrimental to progress and talking about others is not. Mostly dependent on the latter wanting feedback and guidance and the former wanting affirmation and praise.

[WriterJon]

I remember a similar idea from psychology where visualising succeeding in your goals (sitting in front of your finished novel) reduced the likelihood of completing them. Whereas visualising yourself in the middle of the process (sat at the computer, typing away) increased the likelihood of succeeding overall.

I think the idea was a similar thing where the visualisation satisfies some of the reward circuits of actually succeeding. With the appetite partially sated motivation drops.

I am hoping that my goals are specific and process-y enough to avoid too much of the this. There's also a lot of small things to tick off along the way, which allows me to feel I've made a little progress day-on-day which in turn makes things feel neat and short-term and avoids big picture burnout.

[Bill Spight]

I am hoping that my goals are specific and process-y enough to avoid too much of the this. There's also a lot of small things to tick off along the way, which allows me to feel I've made a little progress day-on-day which in turn makes things feel neat and short-term and avoids big picture burnout.

There is research going way back that indicates that having subgoals helps.

[Boidhre]

I am hoping that my goals are specific and process-y enough to avoid too much of the this. There's also a lot of small things to tick off along the way, which allows me to feel I've made a little progress day-on-day which in turn makes things feel neat and short-term and avoids big picture burnout.

There is research going way back that indicates that having subgoals helps.

Yeah the advice I got from psychologists (related to bipolar and ADHD management) was to break up bigger goals into smaller, short term and actionable subgoals. Have goals for this week's study in go, preferably a very attainable amount, rather than having goals about long term rank attainment. Key advice I got that seems relevant for go:

1) "Do not overestimate how much you can get done, it is better to reliably get a little less done than to feel bad and losing motivation because you cannot meet an unreasonable standard you've set for yourself" In particular here, be very wary of predicting how much of a book you can get through in a week in the future and setting that as your target. It is better to have "half an hour a day for life and death" than "Graded Go Problems for Beginners 4, Section 1, Monday." Rather than trying to work out how much time we need to get through a particular book or problem set we set aside blocks of time to do so and let the book take as along as it needs without feeling like we're failing or falling behind.

2) Do not make goals that do not have a natural deadline. It is easier to maintain motivation for a weekly study schedule than an amorphous "1d someday."

3) Reassess goals regularly, e.g. make a weekly plan, at the end of the first week consider what was good and what was bad and adjust the plan for next week accordingly. E.g. over time it might be that reading is your weakness not strategy/opening/etc so you adjust your weekly plan to have a higher % of life and death for a while to see if this helps, if not try a different change. *Expect* to have to change the study plan a lot over time, welcome this as progress in and of itself. Better recognising what we need to improve is something worthy in itself.

4) Fewer shorter term goals work better than a lot of medium term goals. It's easier to focus and get motivated on the former, the latter makes procrastination easier. So for me for example I normally have very simple study goals these days, usually one or two books I'm working through and when I spend my half hour a day doing problems it's from one of those two until I finish one of them and add a new book in. It dodges the "uhhh, which book should I study" procrastination loop by already having that choice made for me. It's also easier to get started (more specifically an ADHD thing) when there is nothing to do other than start. If I have to pick a book etc I could easily feel overwhelmed and find it difficult to focus on the task.

[CDavis7M]

The counterpoint to the "extravert paradox" is when your friends hold you accountable.

I am looking forward to seeing WriterJon's comment on at least one DDK game and his 2 lost games, and pictures of his bookmarks and flashcards.

[WriterJon]

It's a day early, but I am not especially planning to do much Go stuff on Sunday so Imma go ahead and post the update/change of plans here. The progress numbers are: done/total (the week's goal for done).

UPDATE: END of week ONE of ten

I’ve been playing mostly on Asian servers which I can’t get on my computer, so posting games is a bit of a faff. I’ll do it from time to time, but I’m taking it off my goals list for the moment.

Everything else, I’m doing quite well on. I love playing through classic games. I’m not at home for the current period now, so don’t have access to my proper board, but even the magnetic travel board I have is fun to lay games out on. I am a sucker for physical tech.

In terms of games, I think I am also going to try and get all four of my ratings (KGS-9 kyu, OGS-10kyu, Tygem-11 kyu, WBaduk-11 kyu) up to the same level. I still plan to play one each on every server this next week. But I'm also gonna try and put in as much volume as I can on just one of them.

GAMES

1. Play min of 10 games/week (min 10 min on the main clock). At least one each on KGS, OGS, WBaduk & Tygem.
10/100 (10)

READING

1. 38 Basic Joseki - (38 chapters).
4 Joseki a week, flashcards for the main joseki, just read the variations.
10/38 (4) Joseki read
38/38 (4) Joseki flashcarded

2. Tesuji (Davies) - (16 chapters)
2 chapters/week. Flashcard the problems.
2/16 (2) sections read & flashcarded

3. L&D (Davies) (36 chapters)
4 chapters/week. Flashcard the problems.
6/36 (4) chapters read & flash carded

4. Attack & Defense (10 chapters)
Read 1 chapter/week
1/10 (1) chapters read

5. Endgame (5 chapters)
Read 0.5 chapter/week
1.0/5.0 (0.5) chapters read

6. Relentless - (8 main games)
Play through the 8 main games, reading only the main commentary, dipping into variations on the basis of interest.
4/8 (1) main games played through

7. Get Strong at Tesuji (534 problems)
54 problems/week. Mostly treated as reading practice.
54/534 (54) problems done

8. GGP4B3 (77pp)
8 pages/week. Mostly treated as reading practice.
9/77 (8) pages of problems solved

9. Shape Up! (20 chapters)
Read 2 chapters a week.
2/20 (2) chapters read

10. Openings (501 problems)
Do 50 problems a week. Fairly quick, just trying to cement basis opening stuff.
52/501 (50) problems solved

RANK AT THE START OF WEEK two OF ten:
KGS - 9 kyu
OGS - 10 kyu
Tygem - 11 kyu
WBaduk - 11 kyu

[jlt]

I’ve been playing mostly on Asian servers which I can’t get on my computer

On Tygem you can go to Game Record > my game record, double-click on your game and press the button "Save". The file is in .gib format. If you want to convert it into .sgf, you can either use programs like Sabaki or Lizzie, or the online tool http://sowhat.ifdef.jp/SGF/gib2SGF.html

[WriterJon]

On Tygem you can go to Game Record > my game record, double-click on your game and press the button "Save". The file is in .gib format. If you want to convert it into .sgf, you can either use programs like Sabaki or Lizzie, or the online tool http://sowhat.ifdef.jp/SGF/gib2SGF.html

Ah, cheers. I will give that a go.

[WriterJon]

UPDATE: END of week TWO of TWENTY

This week was a more normal one in terms of the quantity of work I could get done. I wasn't able to do nearly the ten week plan volume of things. So I've doubled the time (halving the weekly workload) and that seems much closer to the ideal.

I'm not averse to stretching it out further if need be, will see how this schedule works this week. I tend to find for me underpromising and over-delivering is a good way to keep my motivation up (the goals are, after all kind of arbitrary). So I like goals to be about 75% of what I can actually get done in a regular week. That way I have room for cheat days and to get the dopamine hit of overshooting a goal.

GAMES

1. Play min of 10 slow games/week (min 20 min on the main clock). At least one each on KGS, OGS, WBaduk & Tygem.
19/200 (20)

READING

1. 38 Basic Joseki - (38 chapters).
2 Joseki a week, flashcards for the main joseki, just read the variations.
12/38 (12) Joseki read & flashcarded

2. Tesuji (Davies) - (16 chapters)
1 chapters/week. Flashcard the problems.
4/16 (3) sections read & flashcarded

3. L&D (Davies) (36 chapters)
2 chapters/week. Flashcard the problems.
9/36 (8) chapters read & flash carded

4. Attack & Defense (10 chapters)
Read 0.5 chapter/week
3/10 (1.5) chapters read

5. Endgame (5 chapters)
Read 0.5 chapter/week
1.5/5.0 (1.5) chapters read

6. Relentless - (8 main games)
Play through the 8 main games, reading only the main commentary, dipping into variations as needed.
0.5 games/week
5.0/8.0 (4.5) main games played through

7. Get Strong at Tesuji (534 problems)
27 problems/week. Mostly treated as reading practice.
90/534 (81) problems done

8. GGP4B3 (77pp)
4 pages/week. Mostly treated as reading practice.
11/77 (13) pages of problems solved

9. Shape Up! (20 chapters)
Read 1 chapters a week.
3/20 (3) chapters read

10. Openings (501 problems)
do 25 problems a week. Fairly quick, just trying to cement basis opening stuff.
92/501 (77) problems solved

KGS RANK AT THE START OF WEEK three OF twenty: still mid-9 kyu (only two games on this server so possibly an unhelpful metric. I'll have a think).

I fell a little behind on game-playing (unforch as this is really the important bit), and on GGP4B. But since I got ahead on a few other things this seems to be more of a time management thing than a lack of time thing.

[WriterJon]

A game in which I was roundly trounced. Any comments would be most appreciated.

This seems a theme in my recent play. Large groups that felt safe in the early midgame suddenly are gasping for life after the situation around them start to resolve in the endgame. I'm guessing the main thing is more L&D problems but maybe there's some pattern of strategic failing that leaves me in these spots?