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Posted by Anne B ·

Potential project: Exercise to reduce back pain

Problem: For the past week or two, I've had middle back pain. I think it's from hunching over too much, but I don't have particularly good reasons for thinking that. I've had this issue in the past and not done much about it and it has gone away. This time it seems worse and longer-lived.

Ritesh suggested this video of exercises. I watched the video and was all set to randomly try some of the exercises for some unplanned amount of time and then probably give up on on them after a while without a good reason. Then I thought I’d use this opportunity to try a formal project using the steps here. 

For this post I'm just doing the first two steps: brainstorming goals and thinking critically about the goals. I want to pick a goal before I move on to brainstorming solutions, although it's also possible to brainstorm both goals and solutions before choosing a goal and one or more solutions.

Brainstorm goals.
  • decrease my back pain 
  • eliminate my back pain 
  • try out the exercises in the video once each and decide if I want to do more of them
  • do all the exercises in the video for two weeks and see if it helps with the pain
  • research back exercises and decide on one or more to try
  • try one exercise for two weeks and see if it helps with the pain
  • research ways of helping back pain, including exercises, and decide what to try first
  • learn more about causes of back pain
Think critically about the goals.
I want to keep this project as small as possible, to avoid getting overwhelmed. I think the smallest goal is to pick one exercise without thinking too much about which one, do it for two weeks, and see if my back feels better. A problem with this goal/plan is that if my back feels better after the two weeks, I won’t know if it’s because of the exercise. Maybe now that I’m thinking about it, I’ll straighten up more or relax more and that’ll help. Or maybe my back will get better on its own. Or maybe that exercise won’t help if I do it for two weeks but would help if I did it for longer. Or maybe that exercise won’t work on its own, but would work in combination with some other exercise(s). So while I can probably succeed at a project of picking an exercise and doing it for two weeks, I might not learn much from doing it. I’m leaning towards doing that anyway because it seems like a small enough project to be doable without feeling overwhelming.

Comments & Events

Elliot, Fallible Ideas Elliot
Do smaller projects. Eg learn how to do one exercise. Break that into steps and use an organized process. If it works, great, do a few more smaller projects and they’ll add up to your original goal. If it doesn’t work you’ll have narrowed issues down more than with a larger project. 
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Anne B Anne B
Oh. I was assuming I could just pick one exercise from a video and do it. But actually, when I re-watch the video description of the first exercise (at about 20 seconds into the video), I think I won’t be able to keep my back flat against the wall at first. So yes, just learning to do that exercise right could be a project on its own.

I’m still not sure how I’ll break that into steps and use an organized process. But I’ll give it some thought.
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Anne B Anne B
Side note: I’m not convinced that it’s a good idea or in some cases even possible to plan out learning in small steps and use an organized process for it. But I’m willing to try to learn to do it that way. Maybe I’ll find that that works well for me.
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Elliot, Fallible Ideas Elliot
If you have that objection in your head, you're going to sabotage it, and it's probably not going to work well. You need to address your reasons.
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Anne B Anne B
Oh.
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Anne B Anne B
I don't get what's wrong with trying this method of planning things out into small steps and seeing how it goes when I do it. Isn't this similar to trying some back exercises and seeing if they help? Why can’t I try something, not knowing ahead of time if it’ll be effective?

Let’s see if I can articulate my concerns:

  1. I haven't seen anyone learn in this way. Most people seem to jump into learning without a lot of planning, and just do it. And they do learn things.
  2. How do you figure out all the little steps of how to learn something if you don’t know them? It seems like you’d have to do some steps as experiments, not knowing ahead of time if they lead to where you want to go.
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Anne B Anne B
I learned some grammar a few years ago. I didn’t plan that learning in little steps. I made it up as I went along. I don’t see how I could have planned it out ahead of time. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was figuring out how to learn as I went along.

But maybe I’d have learned better and faster if I’d planned out the steps ahead of time. If I practice learning in this planning-out-the-steps-ahead-of-time way, maybe I’ll find I like how it works for me.
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Anne B Anne B
Back to brainstorming goals for the back pain exercises project:
  • Go through the exercises in the video. Write them down. Try them. Write down which ones I can currently do.
  • Pick one exercise from the video that I can do. Do it daily as recommended for two weeks. Write down at the beginning and end how much back pain I have and what kind.
  • Pick one exercise from the video that I cannot do correctly. Learn to do it correctly.
  • Research exercises that are suggested to help with posture and/or back pain. Find at least five exercises that are recommended in several different sources.
  • For some amount of time (a day? a week? two weeks?) set a timer to go off every ten minutes or so, and when it goes off, try to improve my posture. Write down at the beginning and end how much back pain I have and what kind.
I notice that some of my goals contain a procedure in them. I think that’s because it’s an easier goal to do something specific than to solve a problem or learn something.
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Anne B Anne B
I'm now aiming for a smaller project with a smaller goal than I was in the original post in this thread.
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Anne B Anne B
Following the suggestions here for doing a project, I’m doing the second step:

Think critically about the goals. Which is best?

Using my most recent list of potential goals:

  • Go through the exercises in the video. Write them down. Try them. Write down which ones I can currently do.
     
    I like this one the best because I think it could come before the one after it and that one seems easy. But this is more like a procedure than a goal. Maybe the goal could be “Choose an exercise from the video to do.”

  • Pick one exercise from the video that I can do. Do it daily as recommended for two weeks. Write down at the beginning and end how much back pain I have and what kind.
     
    Again, this is more of a procedure than a goal. The goal could be “Try out one of the exercises from the video that I can already do.”

  • Pick one exercise from the video that I cannot do correctly. Learn to do it correctly.
     
    This one is a goal. It seems hard, though, so not a good goal to start with. It’s hard because I don’t know if I can succeed at it.

  • Research exercises that are suggested to help with posture and/or back pain. Find at least five exercises that are recommended in several different sources.
     
    This sounds like it could take a long time and be complicated. I’m trying to pick an easy project so I can focus on practicing some [steps for doing a project]()

  • For some amount of time (a day? a week? two weeks?) set a timer to go off every ten minutes or so, and when it goes off, try to improve my posture. Write down at the beginning and end how much back pain I have and what kind.
     
    Again, this sounds hard. I’d have to define “try to improve my posture” and I don’t know the best way to do that.

I choose the goal of “Choose an exercise from the video to do.” This is a clear goal; I’ll know if/when I’ve done it. It’s easy, which is what I want for this project.
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Elliot, Fallible Ideas Elliot

I learned some grammar a few years ago. I didn’t plan that learning in little steps. I made it up as I went along. I don’t see how I could have planned it out ahead of time. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was figuring out how to learn as I went along.

That's not what happened. You used my grammar article to organize your learning. Then you used Leonard Peikoff's course. You didn't make it up as you went along. You followed along using other people's planning.

Here's a picture of your emails which illustrates how your approach used a series of little steps in a preset order that was known ahead of time:
image.png 87.3 KB • Download
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Anne B Anne B
I concede that I didn’t make up my grammar learning as I went along. I did follow other people’s courses, which were a form of organization. I did learn in small steps, in a planned order.

But at the start of my grammar study, I could not have written a project plan for what I ended up doing. At the start, I didn’t know whether either of those courses would be valuable to me. I didn’t know if I would continue with the courses. I didn’t know if I’d want to keep learning grammar. I didn’t even think I wanted to learn grammar. I didn’t know how I was going to use the courses or how I was going to post about my learning. I didn’t have the idea of making up extra exercises for things I was having trouble with. I didn’t have an end goal, let alone a well-defined end goal. At some point in the middle, I decided on goals of finishing each of the grammar courses, but I didn’t have those goals at the start. And I still couldn’t say specifically what grammar I learned.

I think organizing learning is good. I think going in small steps is good.

What I’m not sure about is whether and how I can plan out the small steps and organization ahead of time for learning projects. At the start, I often won’t know what I want to learn and what the possibilities are for learning it. I won’t know whether I’ll continue with learning methods or topic areas until I try them. I might not know which smaller steps are needed to finish some bigger steps.

One idea is to make project plans for learning things and be prepared to abandon or modify them. I worry that I’d try to stick to a plan for the sake of sticking to it rather than thinking of ways to improve it or thinking to ditch it and do something else. Maybe there’s value in planning even if things don’t go as planned. Maybe it would take too much time to keep making and remaking plans. Maybe I’d get better at making plans after a while and it wouldn’t take that much time. In any case, this doesn’t solve the problem of not being able to come up with a plan in the first place because I don’t know what the small steps are.
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Elliot, Fallible Ideas Elliot
You have to practice doing successful, organized projects to gain experience, skill and intuition about how to organize them effectively. Knowing what to organize at what level of detail is a skill that you can develop.
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Anne B Anne B
I decided not to do this project since my back pain is better.
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