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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

#181

Post by abootstrapper »

aidenn0 wrote: post #166
abootstrapper wrote: post #116

Everyone here is reading this article as a cautionary tale on procrastination. To me it’s about the unrealistic expectations we place on ourselves. Maybe that’s due to our fake meritocratic society, or comparisons made on social media, or our parents expectations. I thought I’d be a millionaire by now, changing the world for the better, with a Wikipedia page and a yacht. But what I really want now is to put down the…

Writing 500 words before noon is not an unrealistic expectation. Being widely regarded as a genius writer by 35 maybe is. TFA covers both.

> Writing 500 words before noon is not an unrealistic expectation.

No doubt. To me it seems that the author is writing about being unable to meet basic goals due to depression from not having met more fanciful goals.

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

#182

Post by altitudinous »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #91

This is amusing. But I wonder when it was that using curse like "fuck" became acceptable in publications like The New Yorker. I feel like it must have been in the last 10 years. Maybe fewer, like the last 4 or 5. I still don't approve. Of course if they are used just like any other words, then their taboo shine diminishes, and then the difference doesn't mean anything. Language is like that. But there has been a shif…

Yes, I do agree, use of the word feels lazy, poor form. There are trendy stand up comedians and trendy authors who base their entire brand on the use of the word. It is a desperate fall back position.

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

#183

Post by papito »

jeffnv wrote: post #180
tayo42 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Or Facebook. I use Twitter for doomscrolling, at least it has real time info. Facebook has been utterly useless for years now.

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

#185

Post by TeMPOraL »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #176
TeMPOraL wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's very true. Another related phenomenon that improved my typing speed is games that require execution of a lot of complex actions very quickly. Playing them competitively essentially forces you to master random access to your keyboard. In StarCraft, after grokking the core mechanics, your next primary improvement would be raising your APM (actions per minute). In terms of an OODA loop[0], most players are constrained by the Act part. So if you wanted to win, you had to master the art of issuing keyboard+mouse commands at a rate of 3 per second (= ~180 APM, which isn't even progamer level).

--

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

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

#186

Post by imtringued »

voidhorse wrote: post #13

Funny piece. It can be so easy to waste time when we have the internet. I think the most dangerous distractions are the ones that feel productive but don’t actually work toward your goals. For example, browsing hacker news. Such an activity is useful every now and then, but at least for myself I often scroll around only to realize later that it was a massive waste of time I could’ve spent working on something I care…

The worst mistake a lot of people make is put stuff on a backlog aka procrastination. If what you want to do is worth doing then do it today.

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

#187

Post by throwaway0a5e »

hoyd wrote: post #148
apacheCamel wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I feel like I struggle with this a lot. Whether it be reading on here, or seeing it in the news, it is hard to not compare myself to a 20-something year old who just sold his/her company for hundreds of thousands of dollars while I sit around reading the stupid article and playing Dota or starting my millionth side project. It is easy to see that not everyone is going to do something like that, but I thin…

This made me think back to something I once attended, an eye opening weekend cross cultural course, with the purpose of getting to know the different nationalities I worked with. Why they/we would act/speak/behave as we do. We were a full ball room with multiple nationalities. One of the speaks was about how different north is from the south, even within a country. Also, a huge difference was between Europe and US. E…

That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at is is that it takes more than a couple hundred years to shake off the expectations of societies with fairly rigid class systems.

Any plumber (or other blue collar tradesman who is in business for themselves) at the end of their career can have a million bucks in assets. A house, maybe a vacation house on a lake, a fleet of <10 cube vans that ranges from clapped out to brand new, it's not hard for that to add up to a million bucks in personally owned assets. What most people will never have is a million bucks in their checking account.

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

#188

Post by wincent »

voidhorse wrote: post #13

Funny piece. It can be so easy to waste time when we have the internet. I think the most dangerous distractions are the ones that feel productive but don’t actually work toward your goals. For example, browsing hacker news. Such an activity is useful every now and then, but at least for myself I often scroll around only to realize later that it was a massive waste of time I could’ve spent working on something I care…

> I think the most dangerous distractions are the ones that feel productive but don’t actually work toward your goals. For example, browsing hacker news.

Browsing HN has never felt productive to me. At times useful, entertaining, informative, thought-provoking, and at others less so, when it can seem annoying, repetitive, pointless and so on. But never "productive".

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

#189

Post by rwnspace »

aledalgrande wrote: post #137
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #102

I've been mentoring CS college students and new grad SWEs for a while. It's shocking to see how many of them perpetually feel like they're overwhelmed and short on time, yet they can't account for where they've actually spent their time. It's not uncommon for new grad SWEs to complain that an 8-hour work day is somehow consuming 100% of their weekday hours, leaving them without any time to do anything else. On furthe…

It is not just spending time on those sites/apps, it's the pressure society puts on them to get to the next step on the ladder. Perfect houses on Instagram. 24yo making 300K on Blind. 18yo on Youtube making 1M+. Even if you don't want to compare yourself to others, comparisons are everywhere. That adds cognitive load to the slow grind of getting started on a new job, and now 8 hours feel like 12, and at the same time…

I think this effect is tough for anyone tuned to care what others think, and it tends to be rougher the younger you are.

There's a significant lack of guidance in WEIRD societies about how to be a person, and this is topped off by the limited maturation rituals: learning to drive, first full-time job, graduating and buying a house come to mind - but we've somehow come to a consensus that putting a giant paywall in front of them and creating dependencies between them is fine.

Putting it like that, it's no wonder that so many young people are staying home, whittling their time away on scraps of "advice" on how to get on in life.

I've come to pity people who plug such "productivity" advice online, because I feel like they must be suppressing (or missing) an idea of the Good Life: a notion of using one's actions, or speech, to contribute to the common good.

I'm hopeful newer generations in the West will have the nous to reject false idols like "productivity" or extreme wealth, but I think it's on us to expose the painful lessons learned as we're transitioning into a cyborg society.

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

#190

Post by goatherders »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #102

I've been mentoring CS college students and new grad SWEs for a while. It's shocking to see how many of them perpetually feel like they're overwhelmed and short on time, yet they can't account for where they've actually spent their time. It's not uncommon for new grad SWEs to complain that an 8-hour work day is somehow consuming 100% of their weekday hours, leaving them without any time to do anything else. On furthe…

100% agree. One of the first things I do when taking over a decent size sales team is install tracking software on their machines. Not because i care that they are on facebook or CNN but so i can SHOW them they are not nearly as productive as they think.

My personal theory backed only by my own professional history is that most people are only working about 3 or 4 hours a day, tops. Certain tasks like writing code or authoring content cannot be time hacked; it takes the time it takes. But I joke that I never worked LESS than I did once I became a VP and had very little tactical work to do. Most of the workday in many fields and sectors actually doesn't take all that long.

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