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I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

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Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#171

Post by komali2 »

abhayb wrote: post #141
komali2 wrote: post #83

Man, hits home. 2020 is a bad year for 29, feel like the last of my twenties was stolen from me. I have so many things I wanna do, always wanted to do. Some of it I got done! Like becoming an engineer, creating a decent career for myself, riding a motorcycle. Take a step back and look at my life and it's pretty much golden, I could coast for the remainder of it and live better than 99% of humankind throughout the age…

Hey komali2, why'd you have to go and describe me this sharply on a Saturday morning? Is it that I accidentally crowded you out at the Four Barrel pour-over bar and now you want your revenge? I've heard it said about running: it doesn't get easier, you just get better. I'm beginning to think that that is true of life in general. My greatest source of dis-ease (rather than literal disease) is the feeling that I'm not…

Hah it's good to suffer with company.

Re unixy engineering stuff, I'm still a young engineer, the only thing I can think of is that I learn the most when I shoehorn it in during work, if I have time. So recently there was a fat data modification task, turn a bunch of CSV stuff into arrays and escaped strings etc, and rather than try to figure out how to have sheets do it which probably would have been easier and faster, I used it as an opportunity to upskill my vim knowledge. Picked up a couple new commands. That's only when I don't have a crazy deadline looming though sadly.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#172

Post by tasogare »

pjfin123 wrote: post #62
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think that gamification will help my kids get "addicted" to useful things like maths homework or exercise. I worry it is just teaching them to get gamified... But the idea is nice - banks that enforce aging and budgets, shops that put fresh produce at the checkouts and never sell chocolate bars...

The gamification of Duolingo is something that has really worked for me (as an adult). It has all the parts of an addictive mobile game that keep you coming back: a streak that notifies you if you're in danger of losing it (this is the one that really works for me), social rankings, fun graphics, in game currency. I have a 410 day Spanish streak as of this morning! I took French in middle/high school with the standar…

Perfect illustration of GP point: you played for 410 days, yet you only learned the content of what is probably only a few hours of focused learning.

I’ve tested Duolinguo for languages I want to learn, for some I already know and a language BA/MA holder I can guarantee that Duolingo is total crap. This is just a feel good app. Just like another post was mentioning hiw note taking can do more harm than good because it feels like work, Duolingo is given the user the feeling of work and progression while very very little knowledge is gained. Let’s take Japanese as an example. Hiragana and katakana are each divided in 4 parts: a user can easily spend weeks on that and feel he’s making progress. University student on the other side learn that in a week... (for slow learners)

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#173

Post by TeMPOraL »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #69
secondcoming wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to stop being lazy too

At age 35, I was diagnosed with a genetic disorder. I spent years joking "They finally found a better name for my problem than lazy or crazy. " What gets labeled laziness all too often seems to be exhaustion, invisible disability or other hidden problems.

> What gets labeled laziness all too often seems to be exhaustion, invisible disability or other hidden problems.

Agreed.

A good, old essay on this and related questions wrt. character and mental diseases, by Scott Alexander back before he had his own blog: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/895quRDaK6gR2rM82/diseased-t....

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#174

Post by volume »

13415 wrote: post #126
mistersquid wrote: post #105

Personally, the unquestioned Ethos of Productivity characteristic of early 21st century Western Society is much more dangerous than the distractions which can sometimes fill unstructured time. The psychological rigidity and social sacrifices required of always being productive (with little to no unstructured leisure time) actively harms individuals and the societies in which they are embedded, perhaps to the exact ex…

I have a feeling this is even more damaging for Millenials, because they constantly compare themselves with the rest of the world. In a sense, even leisure has turned into competition. When I was in my teens a long time ago I did sports and learned classical guitar. If I had seen the acrobatics you see daily on Reddit or the "casual home musicians" on Youtube, I'd probably have given up all my efforts. Doing a backfl…

The idea you are not doing enough, or that you are not enough spans generations, gender, race and class.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#175

Post by TeMPOraL »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #22

From Taleb's "Antifragile": "Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.If tired after an intercontinental flight, go to the gym for some exertion instead of resting. Also, it is a well known trick that if you need something urgently done, give the task to the busiest (or second busiest) person in the office. Most humans manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, lazy, and unmo…

> the busier they get, the more active they are at other tasks

In my experience, there's a limit to that. If being busy doing tasks gives you regular rewards (and I mean daily, not a monthly paycheck), and you trust yourself to keep the rhythm, then it seems to work. But if you lose the momentum, get swamped in tasks you hate with no clear way out - that's a fast track to complete burnout. Been there, done that, and I like to feel I've finally recovered after many years, but sometimes I'm not so sure.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#176

Post by DoreenMichele »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #152
DoreenMichele wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I homeschooled my sons. After seeing how vastly superior Gungan Frontier and a similar Sim game were to my "pen and paper" style simulation in my college class on environmental biology, I went through their games and decided which games I would count as educational and for which subject. Their joke grew out if conversations that went something like this: Son blurts obscure historical factoid. Me: "Where the hell did…

Personally, I owe my English skills to videogames. While I later continued with proper education, the basics of grammar and vocabulary (as well as many incredibly subject-specific words) I've learned from, in order: Star Trek: Generations, Fallout, and StarCraft. I fondly remember me sitting in front of the first of these games with English/Polish dictionary and translating things on the screen word for word.

Based on the sound of his typing -- which sounds like his dad typing and I know his typing speed because I met him in typing class in high school -- my oldest son probably types at about 80wpm. This is thanks to online games with chat functions. You need to "talk" fast to coordinate with your teammates and stay on top of your duties in the game.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#177

Post by TeMPOraL »

neilalexander wrote: post #115
vmception wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what kind of success do you think those younger people on social media have? Can you give an example of what you look at? Is that success something you want?

The "success" that you see on social media is probably exaggerated at any rate.

It's not necessarily even exaggeration as much as selection bias. If you have enough "friends" on social media, statistically every other day one of them will post something they're proud/happy about, making your feed a constant stream of other people's "success". But the brain is having a hard time dividing these streams by the number of people in your feed; it feels as if it was a small group of people who have it all.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#178

Post by wenc »

pjfin123 wrote: post #62
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think that gamification will help my kids get "addicted" to useful things like maths homework or exercise. I worry it is just teaching them to get gamified... But the idea is nice - banks that enforce aging and budgets, shops that put fresh produce at the checkouts and never sell chocolate bars...

The gamification of Duolingo is something that has really worked for me (as an adult). It has all the parts of an addictive mobile game that keep you coming back: a streak that notifies you if you're in danger of losing it (this is the one that really works for me), social rankings, fun graphics, in game currency. I have a 410 day Spanish streak as of this morning! I took French in middle/high school with the standar…

As a language learner (working on my 8th right now), I dabble in Duolingo from time to time and agree that it provides contact time with the language, and any contact time helps reinforce memory.

Language learning in general though, I have found, is not that amenable to gamification. Some learning methods may be more efficient than others, but even with the most efficient methods, real language learning is still inherently and unavoidably a slog. So if you come across a method that makes it "easy", chances are it's not actually working. It's too easy to trick oneself to think that one is making progress, and then find oneself unable to communicate when called upon to do so.

In the polyglot (ie actual practitioners of extreme language learning) community, there are many super talented language learners but a common pattern among them is the use of surprising traditional learning methods. Most do not use Duolingo but instead elect to do things the hard way, by actually going through workbooks, talking to tutors on iTalki, making mistakes, exposing themselves to media, translating, etc. Space repetition tools are sometimes used. Pimsleur is good for speaking, but not reading/writing so it doesn't get used that much.

There are clips of YouTubers where creators show you how to learned a language to a conversational level in 24 hours etc. but if you look more closely, the experiments are highly edited and the actual outcome is not that great.

I've resigned myself to the fact that the way to actually to learn a language is to jump in and do it the hard way, rather than through easier shortcuts. Language learning is about creating new reflexes and creating new pathways int he brain and there's no easy way to do that (the brain itself resists) without discomfort.

That said, tools like Duolingo do create fun and interest in a language -- and fun is needed to sustain oneself through the journey.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#179

Post by noah_buddy »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #113
simonsarris wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even among people trying to be productive you sometimes see vortexes of distraction, for instance around note-taking. I like note taking (apps and paper) but I think there is such thing as an over-reliance on them. They promote collecting over being. Perhaps also they stop people from completing their own ideas. One becomes Penelope, weaving the burial shroud of a thought forever. Note taking can be pernicious becaus…

It's ironic because the same tools can be used to empower your thinking[0]. Instead of collecting notes, note taking utilities can be used as a sort of L2 cache when you're trying to think something through. E.g. most of my problem solving involves repeated sessions with a text file, in which I dump my stream of thought and refine it. Sometimes it means literally talking with myself via a text file, sometimes it's co…

I think your [0] note points to a hard truth of life. You have to be aware of how you're used to thinking so you can challenge yourself to make your brain work in new ways. I don't think this is by any means essential but I think it can be immensely useful to not always default to the same habit. 80% of the time, it's ok to exploit what you know, but maybe that remaining 20% of the time try thinking in a new way. The hard part is finding those new ways and not being too lazy or rushed to skip it.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#180

Post by jeffnv »

tayo42 wrote: post #153
papito wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are now terrified of putting down a screen and being left alone with their own thoughts for more than 30 seconds. It's horrifying what's bouncing around up in that dome, and having to process it. But this is exactly what we did before. We got bored , we were wasting time, we were experimenting, and that's how great ideas came around.

Idk if it's just terrified, but I think we're addicted. This probably sounds ridiculous but I recently blocked some apps and sites on my phone and actually felt a little off for a day, like my sleep was weird. I think there was a slight withdrawal from the constant bombardment of stuff. It is helping kill my Facebook habit. I don't even really like the site, I just check it impulsively. It's weird. Reddit is another…

What information on reddit is useful?
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