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Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)

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Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)

#91

Post by akeck »

float4 wrote: post #69
hnick wrote: post #66

Thinking keeps me awake. It's getting worse as I get older. Maybe it's anxiety or something related, and sometimes it's worried thoughts, but often it's just running through scenarios. Video games, media plots, what I need to do next week. My brain is far more active after 10pm, and I am personally more motivated. I get a burst of energy but it's not really the right time to clean the house so lying in bed has it all…

I'm exactly the same, only I've done it ever since I was very little and it simply never went away (I'm in my early 20s now). Usually I'm awake in my bed for at least an hour. Sometimes two. I just really can't stop thinking. It's not anxiety in my case. Any people here who were in a similar situation and were able to get rid of it, or make significant improvement?

I get that way sometimes. For me, it's usually because I'm not physically tired enough and have a lot of stress in my system. Rowing 7-10 10km pieces over two weeks fixes it.

Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)

#92

Post by borroka »

Jtsummers wrote: post #33
unix_fan wrote: post #29

My writing skills only improved after I stopped thinking about it. I’m still trying to figure out how to tap into this with other skills.

Practice, relaxation and the relief of (self-induced and exaggerated) pressure. By practicing your writing and getting feedback (from self-critique or others) you have an opportunity to properly internalize things you'd been consciously thinking of before. Maybe it's your style, your choice of terms, whatever. Practice permits the internalization. Relaxation and relief of pressure permit you to actually practice with…

"Failure is often a better teacher than success, you can succeed all your life by dumb luck and never learn a thing or misattribute the success to the wrong elements." - It certainly sounds reasonable in at least some situations (e.g. failing at losing weight does not teach much), but is it true? Luck is necessary to succeed, since most complex situations or actions have probabilistic outcomes, but I have not seen many people being taught much by failure, and for good reasons. In theory, failure can be a good teacher: one has to analyze the causal relationship between the events that led to failure and with a cool and serene mind make a better plan for tomorrow. No judgement, no regrets, no mortification of mind and flesh. They wake up feeling energized thinking about what they have learned by the previous day's failure and they are even more ready for success than yesterday. But this is not realistic; it is easy and common to feel depressed, useless, and small after failure, energy goes down, not up (of course there are exceptions everywhere) and causal relationships are challenging to unravel (when at all possible) and also may change over time and space. Success, on the hand, means that something worked (at least once!).

Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)

#93

Post by fnord77 »

ChipSkylark wrote: post #55

Being already known by my friends and family to be an "overthinker" and prone to "analysis paralysis", I sometimes wonder why I'm still a SWE. I've slowly started to realize over time that my profession is filled with overthinking and over-engineering, and that our interview process can even select for it. IMO its hard to be the person that aces the technical interview gauntlet then walks out of the building and turn…

"if it's dumb and it works, it's not dumb"

Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)

#94

Post by flippinburgers »

amatecha wrote: post #59
ChipSkylark wrote: post #55

Being already known by my friends and family to be an "overthinker" and prone to "analysis paralysis", I sometimes wonder why I'm still a SWE. I've slowly started to realize over time that my profession is filled with overthinking and over-engineering, and that our interview process can even select for it. IMO its hard to be the person that aces the technical interview gauntlet then walks out of the building and turn…

As someone who's been programming for years, one of my biggest complaints in software is over-engineering. It's so universally prevalent, I literally expect to get downvoted for even making this comment. I strongly advocate for simplicity in software implementation, allowing for maintainability and flexibility... the cleanest solution that reaches the goal and doesn't lock us too far into a narrow approach that may b…

I like to believe that experience will eventually drive people towards using scientific parsimony when creating solutions to engineering problems.

I don't think over-engineering is the only problem: shiny-new. Shiny-new syndrome wherein the typically junior programmer cannot help but jump from one new thing to the next, advocating that some new system must use the new tech that they recently discovered. While the enthusiasm is ok, working with people like this can be a drag.

Another problem: we are facebook too! In the sense that small companies heartily believe that they actually have problems at the scale of a company like facebook (or will ever get to that level). Again, hearing someone say, "We should do xyz because Netflix does it!" makes me want to give up on this profession.

Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)

#95

Post by codetrotter »

2112 wrote: post #82
Barrin92 wrote: post #58

In chess there's an idiom for this. "Long think, wrong think" because it's a quite common phenomenon that very good players will ruin positions by rather than playing with their good instinct, over-analyzing a position, there's a related situation of the hardest games to win being already won positions because there's so many ways to win that people will on occasion start doing something really stupid akin to the exa…

“In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths. Lord Takandobu said, “If discrimination is long, it will spoil.” Lord Naoshige said, “When matters are done leisurely, seven out of ten will turn out badly. A warrior is a person who does things quickly. When your mind is going hither and thither, discrimination will never be brought to a conclusion. With an intense, fresh…

Ubuntu the operating system takes its name from the concept that you talk about here.

That is also why the logo of Ubuntu the operating system is three people holding hands, which kind of blew my mind when I first heard about it. Prior to that I thought the logo was just some lines and circles in a pretty pattern with no specific meaning.

Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)

#96

Post by cocoa19 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #58

In chess there's an idiom for this. "Long think, wrong think" because it's a quite common phenomenon that very good players will ruin positions by rather than playing with their good instinct, over-analyzing a position, there's a related situation of the hardest games to win being already won positions because there's so many ways to win that people will on occasion start doing something really stupid akin to the exa…

"civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them"

Similar concept is applied to programming, we call that concept abstraction.

Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)

#97

Post by flippinburgers »

hnick wrote: post #66

Thinking keeps me awake. It's getting worse as I get older. Maybe it's anxiety or something related, and sometimes it's worried thoughts, but often it's just running through scenarios. Video games, media plots, what I need to do next week. My brain is far more active after 10pm, and I am personally more motivated. I get a burst of energy but it's not really the right time to clean the house so lying in bed has it all…

I really do think that I personally made the mistake of allowing myself to think actively in bed and like a pebble down a mountain it is suddenly an avalanche that feels impossible to stop.

I have to be completely exhausted in order to get to sleep reasonably quickly after going to bed. I might try meditation at some point... but yes my mind as well suddenly turns on. I also seem to drift off lightly for some period of time and then I find myself unexpectedly awake again and my mind is obnoxiously alert and ready to grind through thoughts.

The next day is usually not enjoyable.

Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)

#98

Post by dhumph »

float4 wrote: post #69
hnick wrote: post #66

Thinking keeps me awake. It's getting worse as I get older. Maybe it's anxiety or something related, and sometimes it's worried thoughts, but often it's just running through scenarios. Video games, media plots, what I need to do next week. My brain is far more active after 10pm, and I am personally more motivated. I get a burst of energy but it's not really the right time to clean the house so lying in bed has it all…

I'm exactly the same, only I've done it ever since I was very little and it simply never went away (I'm in my early 20s now). Usually I'm awake in my bed for at least an hour. Sometimes two. I just really can't stop thinking. It's not anxiety in my case. Any people here who were in a similar situation and were able to get rid of it, or make significant improvement?

Solitaire works for me.

Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)

#99

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Barrin92 wrote: post #58

In chess there's an idiom for this. "Long think, wrong think" because it's a quite common phenomenon that very good players will ruin positions by rather than playing with their good instinct, over-analyzing a position, there's a related situation of the hardest games to win being already won positions because there's so many ways to win that people will on occasion start doing something really stupid akin to the exa…

> civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them

Interesting take. My first thought was that this relates to societal trust, a cornerstone of civilization. I can buy food from someone I've never met, and keep myself fed, 'without thinking'.

Related:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liars_and_Outliers

* https://www.schneier.com/books/liars-and-outliers/

Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)

#100

Post by hertzrat »

Barrin92 wrote: post #58

In chess there's an idiom for this. "Long think, wrong think" because it's a quite common phenomenon that very good players will ruin positions by rather than playing with their good instinct, over-analyzing a position, there's a related situation of the hardest games to win being already won positions because there's so many ways to win that people will on occasion start doing something really stupid akin to the exa…

I’m working on a video game right now and I’m having this problem with the story and dialogue. In the past my game design was in the realm of tabletop rpgs, so you come up with the idea, add some details, and then you run it right away. You see the player responses in person, face to face, learn whether you did well or not, and then move on to do even better the next time. It works great. In a video game, there can be months between conception and a player experiencing it, and you won’t be there to see most of them react, so you can second guess every single detail hundreds of times until it’s hard to judge things clearly. I’ve never been into heavy up front design before, but it might actually be helpful for this specific problem - ie, to just write it and then trust it later on
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