161–170 of 173 posts
Whenever I feel time anxiety I try to think of Ray Kroc[1] He didn't get started on his version McDonalds until he was 64, an age that many people would be about to retire. I'm not a great fan of McDonalds food but if you can start a company like that at 64 you can start anything at any age. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kroc
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The feeling of regret about a past decision is an odd one to me. It's based on the premise that you know with some certainty what would have happened had you taken the opposite choice. That premise is false, you have no idea what would have happened if you had done things differently. Your life could be terrible, your life could be better. You have no way of knowing. I believe the best treatment for it is to make sur…
You never have no way of knowing anything. Cogito ergo sum and maybe we’re just a brain in a vat. But in the mean time we can make pretty good estimations, and saying “I expect a significantly better life with P above some threshold and error margin within some bounds” is a meaningful statement. Even in the face of nothing ever being certain. You allude to it here: > It's based on the premise that you know with some…
Maybe you know things now that you didn't know when you made the decision. Or the circumstances which you hoped wouldn't come true as a result of your decision did come true so you got the lower probability sub-optimal outcome rather than a better one. Or maybe future you is different to past you and has different priorities which you didn't predict.
Either way, you can only make decisions on the information you have and with the judgement mechanisms you have learnt at that time.
With that in mind, regretting a well thought out decision that you now think was sub-optimal still seems odd to me!
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Thanks for the response, I've taken up meditation for the last couple of weeks. Definitely helps clear my head, at least for a short period of time. I'm really not concerned about being known throughout history, my only goal is that by the end of my life, I feel like I've done something fulfilling and rewarding enough to warrant the incredibly good fortune I've had being born during this time, to this family, in this…
Well my point with that response was more of: by who's metric are you measuring your warranting being here? If it isn't history's, then I think it should be your own. And if its your own, I really believe as long as you put in a good effort - not even necessarily your best effort all the time - then that should be good enough. A higher sense of purpose is excellent but you also have to understand that life is really…
Do cats "put in a good effort"? Rabbits? Gazelles? Grasses? Fish?
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I would take it even farther than that and say that people vastly overestimate the time it takes to get good at most things. It might take 10,000 hours (or more) to be considered an expert pianist, but you could spend a tenth that much time getting good enough to impress everyone you know with a few songs at parties, and with just 50 hours of practice, you'll be better at the piano than basically everyone you know (y…
I wrote a book on this topic: https://first20hours.com There's a ton of (replicated) psychology research that supports this thesis: the early hours of skill acquisition are very effective/efficient in terms of improvement-per-hour-invested. 20-50 hours is enough to see very substantial improvements in any skill, even if you have no prior knowledge or experience. I wish more people focused on the early process of skil…
Also check out this guy who documents his progress playing table tennis everyday for a year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y21uwFUgkE. I'm nowhere near his level but I can tell he got pretty good.
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Serious question, what other hobbies can one have?
All of programmerdudes examples are different modes of consumption . In my experience the most fulfilling hobbies are those where you create something. It really doesn't matter what specifically - the creative part is the source of a sense of fulfillment. In my neck of the woods it now is a good time to try to make wine by oneself, for example. Just harvest some fruits, order yeast and off you go. Woodworking is pret…
- Woodworking
- Car maintenance
- Gardening
- Baking
- Painting miniatures
- D&D
- Home Brewing
I currently don't have time to engage in all of them on a regular basis, but tend to cycle through them throughout the year :)
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Yeah, but it's deleterious to my societal productivity. Like I'm happier spending my time with my friends. But I have less of that burning desire to build. I think I might actually be content to live just happily on the beach with the wealth I have now, so long as everyone I love is nearby and we frequently meet. But obviously I don't want to be content with that.
It's not obvious to me why you wouldn't be content with that. Living on the beach with the people you love sounds pretty fantastic to me. What's the end goal? Amass more wealth? Build a legacy?
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Just learned how to ride a motorcycle (more or less) on my own over about a month or so. I took a motorcycle course over one weekend. Took the license test another weekend. Bought a bike and filled out paperwork during the week (registration & insurance). Rode almost every day for the first month, practiced maneuvers (finding the friction zone, quick stopping w/o skidding) I wasn't comfortable with in a parking lot.…
You might be overestimating your skill level. Let's see what you think after your first serious crash.
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One hint I can give you is that joining groups seemed to be the thing that really turned my news feed into something else. I've joined groups related to game programming, music production, Arduino and a bunch of others related to local music gigs (plus some support groups that I feel I can contribute to) and now there's actually a lot of interesting (and pleasantly technical) stuff in my feed. The other effect this h…
On a related note : That’s also how I use Twitter - carefully curated. I’m more of an occasional user, a lurker more than a tweeter. And the resulting recommendations, ads, and tweets are relevant and useful to me in the topics I like. It’s not perfect but it makes general discovery - breadth and depth - meaningful to me, whenever I go thru my feed.