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Ask HN: Staying Sharp

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Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#11

Post by apu »

californiaguy wrote: post #8

Set lofty goals. Attain them. Repeat. Right now you're living a mediocre life. You live in an apartment, you program web sites and haven't finished college. What's so special about that? Why do you need to be incredibly sharp for that? You don't. Do something you need to be sharp to do and you will become sharp. My best advice for you is to not worry about this shit until you're 25 and have a normal young adulthood i…

Wow this is some bad advice. And with an arrogant/demeaning attitude to match.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#12

Post by jperras »

justlearning wrote: post #7
lsb wrote: post #3

Sit in on some classes at a nearby university? Watch Feynman's lectures again?

"Sit in on some classes at a nearby university?" I assume you mean without paying for the course? how does one go about doing this? I sometimes have the strong urge to sit in a class - to feel like a student. I never knew you could just go and sit in a class? I also read similar HN suggestion on a post some time back. I want to try this out fwiw.

In university, you're not paying for your seat in the class, but rather for the opportunity to write the exams and get a grade (save for lab-oriented classes, where equipment and materials are limited).

It's quite easy to simply walk in and audit a class, and I remember quite a few people doing just that when the classes I was attending were being taught by fairly well known professors.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#13

Post by swombat »

apu wrote: post #11
californiaguy wrote: post #8

Set lofty goals. Attain them. Repeat. Right now you're living a mediocre life. You live in an apartment, you program web sites and haven't finished college. What's so special about that? Why do you need to be incredibly sharp for that? You don't. Do something you need to be sharp to do and you will become sharp. My best advice for you is to not worry about this shit until you're 25 and have a normal young adulthood i…

Wow this is some bad advice. And with an arrogant/demeaning attitude to match.

I'm not sure the advice is all that bad. The attitude isn't great, but setting lofty goals is a pretty good way to keep sharp. And ultimately you do have to prioritise what you want to get out of your life, so it's worth thinking about.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#15

Post by ryanwaggoner »

I sympathize, believe me. Life is too damn short and there's hardly enough time in the day to juggle work and time with people I care about, let alone learning new things that have no immediate application to my life.

I think my long-term strategy for dealing with this is to amass enough wealth to have more freedom of time to be able to do some of these things. Perhaps I'm naive. Time will tell.

On a more immediate and practical note, my new Kindle should arrive any day now. Reading has always been my favorite way of learning new things, and I devour books at a good clip. This makes it difficult, because hauling around several thick books at a time is a pain. Hoping the Kindle makes it easier to fit reading into my life.

Side note: make sure you finish your degree. I know guys with loads of potential who came within a few classes of graduating from top engineering programs and then got distracted by life for several years. Seems like a terrible waste to come so close and not finish.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#16

Post by all_elements »

I am in a similar situation.

I listen to books on my iPod when I commute. I catch some online reading sometimes at work. I meditate and get some exercise 3 times a week. And I hang out with sharp people.

But I guess there is no all encompassing formula. Some people here seem to have other avenues.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#17

Post by jperras »

Virax wrote: post #10

I have a full time job as a web developer, do not make open source contributions, do not have a girlfriend or a social life, and do have a healthy amount of free time. I spend much of my free time reading technical articles and textbooks in CS and finance (although I could be reading up on representation theory if I wanted to). I also program in my spare time. Sadly, you've left out many of the details that would hel…

I actually have 3 credits (equivalent to one class) in a non-science related field left to my degree, which I will be finishing in the next semester.

Most of the classes I took were honours level, and my GPA was quite average. My grades suffered a bit from me needing to work quite a bit to pay tuition, but that's not something that particularly bothers me. I learned much from working in the 'real world', and the few GPA points I traded for that experience has put me quite far ahead of many of my peers.

I took two classes in statistical mechanics (one graduate level), three classes in quantum physics (one graduate level), two classes in classical mechanics, one class in general relativity (graduate level) taught by a relatively well known cosmologist, and various other honours level classes in calculus, algebra, real analysis, partial differential equations, fluid dynamics, as well as your boilerplate base classes physics and mathematics.

I've been thinking about going to grad school in a few years, perhaps in a more CS-related domain - I find Information Theory to be interesting, even if I don't quite understand everything that I'm reading.

I realize that I could drop everything and focus all of my efforts on study, but at this point in my life I'm not ready to do that. I am more interested in how others manage to strike a balance between life and an insatiable quest for knowledge, which is something I believe many on HN have to deal with.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#18

Post by jhancock »

At the age of 40 now, I have a strong desire to re-learn math. Up until the age of 22 or so, I excelled. Now most of the knowledge is gone. Two days ago I was writing some code that required me to solve an equation. I picked up a pen and paper and thought I should be able to quickly figure it out. But my mind couldn't find the tools it needed to formulate what was a pretty simple problem. It took me a few minutes to struggle through what would have been easy when I was 18.

During the last 20 years, I gained lots of skills and kept up with software development. But the core stuff like math slipped away. I feel I can relearn major chunks of it and intend to. I think if your mind is constantly learning, you will always have the ability to re-learn the old things again.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#19

Post by oz »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #15

I sympathize, believe me. Life is too damn short and there's hardly enough time in the day to juggle work and time with people I care about, let alone learning new things that have no immediate application to my life. I think my long-term strategy for dealing with this is to amass enough wealth to have more freedom of time to be able to do some of these things. Perhaps I'm naive. Time will tell. On a more immediate a…

I think my long-term strategy for dealing with this is to amass enough wealth to have more freedom of time to be able to do some of these things. Perhaps I'm naive. Time will tell.

That's my strategy as well.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#20

Post by californiaguy »

apu wrote: post #11
californiaguy wrote: post #8

Set lofty goals. Attain them. Repeat. Right now you're living a mediocre life. You live in an apartment, you program web sites and haven't finished college. What's so special about that? Why do you need to be incredibly sharp for that? You don't. Do something you need to be sharp to do and you will become sharp. My best advice for you is to not worry about this shit until you're 25 and have a normal young adulthood i…

Wow this is some bad advice. And with an arrogant/demeaning attitude to match.

> bad advice

Most reality-based advice is hard to listen to and sounds arrogant and demeaning. Too often HN is just a circle jerk session of smart people telling each other what they want to hear ... possibly on a thread about how the ignorant unwashed masses are so easily tricked by confirmation bias.

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