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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

#201

Post by triyambakam »

balfirevic wrote: post #193
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's not uncommon for new grad SWEs to complain that an 8-hour work day is somehow consuming 100% of their weekday hours. I don't know man, I've been struggling with this myself. Obviously it's not literally true, but the problem is that after you account for 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work and chores/eating/hygiene/cooking/commute, every thing you want to do starts seriously cutting into the time that's left. Ne…

I was there not very long ago, and sometimes I still feel that way. But the change I made is to be strict without being restrictive, discipline with a sense of freedom. The biggest habit that has helped me is to just choose 2-3 most important things to do in the day and try to get them done as early in the day as possible. It feels so great to accomplish, and it's challenging but not unreasonable. Choose one goal and I feel like a failure and if I don't do it. Choose ten and I won't even do one. But a few good goals is the perfect balance, if I miss one but get the others I feel good. (This habit I learned from Zen to Done which also has nine othrt useful habits to slowly adopt over time)

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

#202

Post by ethbro »

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 a few things aren't hammered into young people enough today.

1) Any action is greater than no action. It doesn't matter how much you suck at something. Do it. Congrats, you've beaten everyone who never started.

2) Finish things. No matter how ugly it is. Even if you have to half-kill yourself to drag it that last inch over the line. Congrats, you've beaten everyone who never finished.

3) Your worst effort is probably better than average. Stop obsessing about the 1% best. That's not who you're competing against. You're competing against the pool of real people a company / project could afford to hire, who are available to hire.

4) Everyone starts off terrible at everything. No movie covers the 10,000 hours someone is learning: that's why training montages are a cliché.

5) Forgive yourself. It's okay not to be spectacular every minute of every day. Consistency of effort is more valuable than cyclical manic-depression. The key to becoming better starts with accepting and being happy with where you're starting from.

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

#203

Post by intrepidhero »

For me, thinking about what I didn't accomplish today is the first step on a short road to depression. Better questions to ask are: 1. Did I see or hear something beautiful. 2. Did I eat or drink something that nourished my body? 3. Did I have a thought that buoyed my spirits? 4. Did I have a pleasant interaction with a fellow human/animal? 5. Did I help someone?

Journey before destination and all that.

I'm not a great person and I have chosen not to aspire to do great things, though I admire people who do. I aspire to an ordinary life lived in contentment. One where I bring some good into the lives of people around me.

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

#204

Post by balfirevic »

triyambakam wrote: post #201
balfirevic wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not uncommon for new grad SWEs to complain that an 8-hour work day is somehow consuming 100% of their weekday hours. I don't know man, I've been struggling with this myself. Obviously it's not literally true, but the problem is that after you account for 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work and chores/eating/hygiene/cooking/commute, every thing you want to do starts seriously cutting into the time that's left. Ne…

I was there not very long ago, and sometimes I still feel that way. But the change I made is to be strict without being restrictive, discipline with a sense of freedom. The biggest habit that has helped me is to just choose 2-3 most important things to do in the day and try to get them done as early in the day as possible. It feels so great to accomplish, and it's challenging but not unreasonable. Choose one goal and…

Do you mean outside of work? Things like side project, learning, reading and so on?

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

#205

Post by TeMPOraL »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #191
TeMPOraL wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 constr…

I was Director of Community Life for the oldest set of gifted support email lists on the internet while I was a homeschooling parent. It was common knowledge in those circles that the best way to improve typing speed for kids was to encourage them to get involved in things like online games. My son was already a gamer. He hated his typing program. I told him he could quit doing practice typing as one of his assignmen…

I've always hoped this was a common knowledge, but unfortunately it somehow never reached my parents or my teachers.

> He hated his typing program.

I remember those typing practice programs. I always hated them. Super boring, couldn't stand them for more than 2 minutes.

Much later on (and well after I've achieved high typing speeds) I've discovered The Typing of The Dead - a House of The Dead clone where you shoot zombies by correctly typing words. For me, that was the ultimate typing program: it gave the same exercises, but in the context where I could spend hours in front of it. I suppose that was an early form of what we know today as "gamification".

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

#206

Post by emteycz »

crazygringo wrote: post #136
type0 wrote: post #118

> but I didn’t finish it, just like I didn’t finish my Ph.D. in political science I hope it's to the best. Humanity needs less ph.Ds in non scientific fields and more Ph.Ds in fields that don't urge the need to call themselves science, you know like real scientific endeavors, chemistry physics and so on

Hard, hard disagree. We already have all the resources to feed the world's population and then some, to shelter everyone, to provide health care, to stop global warming, to end poverty. We already have enough technology and then some. The reality is that it's politics, war and corruption that gets in the way. Sadly, our understanding of how to get along with each other for our mutual benefit is far behind our scienti…

The hardest question is how do we replace money. How do we split out luxury, leisure, fun etc then? How do we determine what is rentable and what's not? How do we decide who and whether has e.g. the latest gaming computer? How do we decide what is worthwhile usage of natural resources?

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

#207

Post by puranjay »

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…

I thought I'd be a millionaire by 30 too.

But I hit 30 last year and found that what I truly wanted to do was make music, write, and spend time with my family.

I don't advocate mediocrity, but everyone doesn't have to be a high achiever. It's okay to live a fulfilling life doing what you like, even if it doesn't make you rich or earn you Wikipedia entries.

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

#208

Post by hodgesrm »

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…

On the other hand some very well-known people felt profound conflict about not achieving their self-imposed goals before actually doing so. There's a famous story about Caesar bursting into tears at the thought of how Alexander the Great had built an empire whereas Caesar himself had done nothing of note by the same age. [1]

It's common to read about other military leaders like Alexander who felt similarly, but perhaps military historians just like these stories. The behavior seems general. I would guess that Elon Musk is pretty frustrated that his rockets don't reach Mars yet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar#Early_life_and_c...

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

#209

Post by martin_balsam »

andi999 wrote: post #36

To me as an armchair psychologist, this sounds more like that the author should get a check for ADHD with depression as a co-morbitity.

The daily shout is the humor section of the New Yorker. I wouldn’t take it too seriously

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

#210

Post by ethbro »

papito wrote: post #138
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…

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.

I can't lay hands on a link, but there was an article about the psychological phenomenon of time passing too quickly. It was a measurable state you could detect a brain as either being in or not in.

One of the most reliable ways to reset internal time perception? Experiencing nature.

I try and take more walks now.

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