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Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

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Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#181

Post by snarfy »

blakewatters wrote: post #138

Your problem is very simple: you are working on bullshit. Across your entire description of your situation you never once mentioned what it is you are actually working on but called out the income you hit and frameworks you are playing with. I humbly submit that your problem is that you have lost the plot. Hate to break it to you chief but the libraries and frameworks and techniques you use to work are not the point.…

> Creating stuff that people want to use is all that matters.

Don't forget that you are one of those people.

When it's something you want, it's somehow easy to find yourself at 3am banging out x86 asm for fun. Doing the exact same work in a corporate day job that you hate makes you want to stab your eyes out.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#182

Post by sinenomine »

lobocinza wrote: post #169
sinenomine wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some examples of directly measurable KPIs: 1. Mood diary 2. Time spent on social media, negative 3. Hours of sleep 4. Steps walked, number of repetitions in exercise, calories burnt 5. Psychometric tests (help measure mental clarity) https://openpsychometrics.org/ 6. N-back: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0220... 7. Active vocabulary test to measure available crystallized intelligence 8. Biom…

So what are your goals? 1 - Wake up happy each day? 2 - Do not use social media? 3 - Sleep 8 hours per day? 4 - Walk 3000 steps per day? 5 - I fail to see how a personality test can measure mental clarity? Even if they aren't useless constructs. Thought "core self-evalutions" if taken regularly can be a good indicator of issue. 6 - Not sure what are you measuring. Work memory? 7 - "Available crystallized intelligence…

My goals, as I have already said, are pretty obvious: find a good set of lifestyle changes (including exercise types and patterns, diet, sleep conditions, outdoor activities, supplements and drugs, but also including choice of country & city to live in), so these metrics are optimized in good direction, and I feel better. I tried less systemic approach and it didn't work for me. In my impression our genetic makeup tends to make us choose a complementary sort of environment, so it all (behavior, health, mood) comes to equilibrium and balances out - it's really hard to make consistent progress when you are inside such perverse equilibrium. Thus the need for heavy-handed hard measurement approach.

1. Mood diaries are more about trends and avoiding depressive episodes, it's better to rate your mood in the evening so your professional life is included in the rating. For example if your manager stresses you out on your job, you may not think about it in the moment, but it may show on your mood diary as a week-scale trend.

2. Completely avoiding social media is an unattainable goal, thus usage should be limited to 0.5-1.0 hr.

3. Yes, and sleep well, which is quite hard.

4. 3000 is too little, I'd aim to 5000-10000.

5. There are various tests, I'm specifically interested in IQ-test https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/FSIQ/ but it's more or less interchangeable with N-back. IQ is a scary number, but it's a good barometer for how good you really feel. A difference between "a good day" and a "bad day" is clearly seen on such test.

6. Working memory and attention, yes. These are degraded by lack of sleep & stress & aging.

7. Again, lack of sleep & stress & aging tends to degrade active vocabulary, in my case.

8. Of course we age, but this aging process is malleable: some interventions are shown to decrease (!) the value of various aging clocks. Yes, the aging clocks themselves are imperfect, but this decrease is often correlated with subjective & objective improvements on other axes.

If you accept fundamentally mechanistic view of nature, biology and ourselves, you might as well position yourself to reap the benefits.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#183

Post by lobocinza »

groffee wrote: post #121
ttoinou wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any example of a smart KPI ?

"Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely" Basically just one of those meaningless buzz words that gets thrown around. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/ot...

It sure sounds smart, just isn't. Another example of a mechanistic approach in a field were humans are the major factor. Goals at best are arbitrary targets reached via consensus.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#184

Post by iamben »

myth_drannon wrote: post #170
germs12 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rails does 95% of this out of the box. Companies need to understand how much their poor technology decisions cost them...

It's the developers not companies that make this decision. Out of boredom or trying to get promotion. I'm just so tired of seeing something that could have been one static html page but was built with NextJS+lambdas+terraform and a hundred more buzzwords.

Seeing the same trend in web/ecommerce development. The brand needs a simple site with a little bit of dynamic sprinkled through it. The agency chooses to build a full SPA with all the bells and whistles. In doing so they neglect/break basically everything else - SEO, connected martech, analytics, etc etc. Sure, some bits are a little 'faster', but then there's all sort of UX issues with parts that update too slowly and goodness knows what else. And all at a cost dramatically greater than necessary.

I'm sure some agencies do a fantastic job (those that think about the bigger 'more than just dev' picture). But on 95% of the sites I'm seeing right now the downsides far outweigh the benefits and it feels like dev for the sake of dev.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#185

Post by sumtechguy »

zippercreatemy wrote: post #54

I think it is more to do with your maturity allowing you to see more of your weaknesses. When you are young, myopia makes you think you know it all and can solve everything. Young devs run gun ho into things and they focus on happy paths and ignore a lot of the complexity that you learn from experience, noting there is some exceptions. The second problem is scope, when you are a junior you normally have a single proj…

This is also something many forget. Learning takes time. I learn one simple concept in a day or so. A framework? That is going to take a couple of weeks at a minimum. Staying motivated during that time can be difficult if you have nothing to directly apply what you just learned on. The old 'teacher when will I ever use this' question. For many if it is not right away it feels silly to do it.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#186

Post by sinenomine »

doliveira wrote: post #177
sinenomine wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some examples of directly measurable KPIs: 1. Mood diary 2. Time spent on social media, negative 3. Hours of sleep 4. Steps walked, number of repetitions in exercise, calories burnt 5. Psychometric tests (help measure mental clarity) https://openpsychometrics.org/ 6. N-back: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0220... 7. Active vocabulary test to measure available crystallized intelligence 8. Biom…

I envy your energy to even spend time tracking all those things. Just reading and imagining keeping them as a routine sounds exhausting.

You can track only the most important ones. Biological age isn't something you need to track every day - more like every month, or every week if you are rich. Step-tracking & sleep tracking are given for free.

To be honest I don't have much energy either, unless I take stimulants. Which I don't do often due to reasons.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#187

Post by nonameiguess »

adriand wrote: post #135
sinenomine wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some examples of directly measurable KPIs: 1. Mood diary 2. Time spent on social media, negative 3. Hours of sleep 4. Steps walked, number of repetitions in exercise, calories burnt 5. Psychometric tests (help measure mental clarity) https://openpsychometrics.org/ 6. N-back: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0220... 7. Active vocabulary test to measure available crystallized intelligence 8. Biom…

I have a strong dislike of the modern focus on personal measurement and metrics. It implies a sort of mechanistic existence. It’s also often connected to a focus on productivity optimization, which given that the OP may be suffering from burnout, seems like it might be the wrong direction. My advice to OP: whether it’s burnout or not (and it does sound like it), you aren’t liking what you’re doing right now, so if yo…

These can also be SMART KPIs.

Compare "take at least two weeks of vacation, where vacation is defined as not checking any email or voicemail and engaging in purely arbitrary activities not directed by an external authority, within the next six months" to "you need a sabbatical."

Heck, even your own wording is already edging toward SMART. Staying off the Internet and not measuring steps or sleep duration are quantifiable goals. Binary, but still quantifiable.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#188

Post by incomingpain »

fleb wrote: post #16

This sounds like burnout to me. I am in my mid-40s and used to have spells like this, but no more. I needed some kind of large change, back then, to get myself sorted out, but this could be pretty destructive because if I waited too long, the change I'd need wouldn't really be conducive to staying on whatever project I was on. The key to not having to deal with this problem anymore, for me, was starting to proactivel…

>The key to not having to deal with this problem anymore, for me, was starting to proactively switch things around to break the routine of consecutive work-weeks. One of my tricks was to do some kind of mini-vacation every 6-8 weeks, go somewhere new, leave work behind for 3-4 days. Even smaller things like regular social events can work wonders - anything that breaks the weekly routine.

I wonder if the VW ID Buzz California Camper van will be great for this. Take it for a drive to wherever. Go fishing, whatever. No need to rent a hotel or anything like that. Just hit the road and enjoy.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#189

Post by riledhel »

blakewatters wrote: post #138

Your problem is very simple: you are working on bullshit. Across your entire description of your situation you never once mentioned what it is you are actually working on but called out the income you hit and frameworks you are playing with. I humbly submit that your problem is that you have lost the plot. Hate to break it to you chief but the libraries and frameworks and techniques you use to work are not the point.…

>That is what this game is all about.

It may to you, but for lots of people it's just another job and that is also valid and sometimes healthy too.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#190

Post by sinenomine »

lobocinza wrote: post #183
groffee wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely" Basically just one of those meaningless buzz words that gets thrown around. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/ot...

It sure sounds smart, just isn't. Another example of a mechanistic approach in a field were humans are the major factor. Goals at best are arbitrary targets reached via consensus.

In my honest opinion one of the largest meta-problems ever amounts to decent mechanistic routes of helping each other being not taken in favor of more feel-good decent sounding verbal coping.

Virtue signaling should be banned.

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