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Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

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Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#101

Post by SamPatt »

Iv wrote: post #95
schindlabua wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah sounds like you described me perfectly. But I do have to say, ever since I'm programming full-time I seem not to be able to just code for fun anymore. I used to program all day long.. and I guess I still do, but now it's for work, and after 8h of work I'm just done, you know? The "stuff I want to look at" list is growing longer and longer and there's no hope of me ever catching up. (I can't imagine how it is for…

> How do you get anything done in your private life at all? We don't. It sucks. And if we ever mention the impact of having a kid on our quality of life it makes us bad parents and terrible persons. I should have resisted more about having a kid. I am happy we made only one.

Is your child still young?

Because as children age you're able to reclaim some of your life back. At least, if you don't fall into the trap of them living a packed schedule themselves.

I've got three, the eldest is now old enough to babysit the rest if needed. With a consistent bedtime and family nearby to care for them on occasion, my wife and I do get some spare time. We mostly choose to spend that together but we can pursue our own hobbies also.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#102

Post by Iv »

SamPatt wrote: post #101
Iv wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you get anything done in your private life at all? We don't. It sucks. And if we ever mention the impact of having a kid on our quality of life it makes us bad parents and terrible persons. I should have resisted more about having a kid. I am happy we made only one.

Is your child still young? Because as children age you're able to reclaim some of your life back. At least, if you don't fall into the trap of them living a packed schedule themselves. I've got three, the eldest is now old enough to babysit the rest if needed. With a consistent bedtime and family nearby to care for them on occasion, my wife and I do get some spare time. We mostly choose to spend that together but we…

7. Yes I know, it gets better. That's still going to be 10 years off my already too short life.

And how I envy the idea that living close to family would save you time instead of draining some.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#103

Post by fulafel »

schindlabua wrote: post #66
Netcob wrote: post #44

Goal-oriented work, creativity and motivation definitely have a difficult relationship. In programming, I learn the most things simply by experimenting at home on my own. I'm thinking about switching jobs, so I wanted to learn some new frameworks and concepts to help with that, and I decided to make my personal projects a bit more "professional". Use continuous integration, focus more on web stuff, build and automati…

Hah sounds like you described me perfectly. But I do have to say, ever since I'm programming full-time I seem not to be able to just code for fun anymore. I used to program all day long.. and I guess I still do, but now it's for work, and after 8h of work I'm just done, you know? The "stuff I want to look at" list is growing longer and longer and there's no hope of me ever catching up. (I can't imagine how it is for…

Get a job where you can use part of your time to look at cool stuff. With some luck you may already have one.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#104

Post by Broken_Hippo »

jmfldn wrote: post #51
Stevvo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also need tenure, more than anything else.

"You also need tenure, more than anything else." Sadly yes. An argument that the current uni system should be changed to make this not so.

That just can't happen, though. Part of tenure is having experience and being able to draw from that. It isn't just job experience, either: Life experience counts and can give your different ways to think outside of the box.

The best example I can give is art related: Documentaries and other non-art learning puts a variety of concepts and ideas in your brain, making it easier to think of creative concepts for artwork.

The process takes time, though, more time than can be reasonably stuffed into getting a degree.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#105

Post by Dumblydorr »

I love those moments when you're warming up, getting into the work, you may hit that first snag or obstacle, but you reflexively enter play mode.

Now you're practicing creatively, now you're finding out new features of your tools and packages and data. You're hacking in a new script, you're trying new ideas. You find the answer,bring it back in, integrate it. You click run, and it just works!! Yess!!

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#106

Post by earhart »

CalRobert wrote: post #98
schindlabua wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah sounds like you described me perfectly. But I do have to say, ever since I'm programming full-time I seem not to be able to just code for fun anymore. I used to program all day long.. and I guess I still do, but now it's for work, and after 8h of work I'm just done, you know? The "stuff I want to look at" list is growing longer and longer and there's no hope of me ever catching up. (I can't imagine how it is for…

Dad of two - we basically don't, if I'm honest. I've had to give up on an immense number of things and while lots of people tell you "having kids is expensive" very few will tell you that the most expensive part is the opportunity cost. I have so many things I want to do and it hurts, almost physically, to watch other people doing them because they could hack on stuff after work while I had to deal with making sure a…

FWIW - in my experience, if their demands upset you, it’s not going to go well (you’ll get more demands and feel more exhausted); if you laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation, remind them to ask nicely, and still help them with what they need/want, you’ll be much less stressed, you’ll be teaching them that being unpleasant doesn’t bother you and doesn’t help but does have the natural consequences of slowing down what they want, and you’ll be teaching them a better way of being; at least with my own kids, they picked up on it pretty quickly, and they started being much more fun to hang out with.

(Good luck!)

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#107

Post by bradrn »

leephillips wrote: post #77
benrbray wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this way of looking at the problem, I wouldn't have thought of this! I think this relies implicitly, too, on incompressibility of the fluid, no? As well as surface tension? Otherwise, we might imagine the fluid having less density at the bottom, while occupying a circular cross-section of the same area.

It does rely on incompressibility, but, to this order, does not include surface tension. The water faucet puzzle that interested me as a student was after the water had reached the sink and begun to spread out radially from the stream. Have you noticed that there is a circular boundary where the layer of water suddenly changes depth?

> Have you noticed that there is a circular boundary where the layer of water suddenly changes depth?

I stumbled upon an explanation for this a while ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_jump

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#108

Post by Borrible »

jacobmischka wrote: post #81
Borrible wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just read his lectures decades ago. So, he was an overall great guy, you say? And there is an audio book version of his illustrious escapades? Great, have to give it a try. Thank you!

I might recommend actually reading it, the narration of the Audible recording at least wasn't spectacular.

Ah, a pity.

I love listen to audio books, but you're absolutely right, the narrator is sometimes more important than the narrative. Some gifted narrators probably could read out operating instructions of kichen machines and it would be entertaining.

Thanks for the advice.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#109

Post by jmfldn »

mmcnl wrote: post #74
jmfldn wrote: post #6

"The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate." This shows the extreme importance of blue sky thinking and allowing people to follow their whims sometimes rather than not starting something unless it fits into existing research goals and funding. This breakthrough all lead from an observation that had no apparent use beyond fulfilling a whim…

Not everybody is Feynman ofcourse. You have to accept the risk that giving freedom for creativity won't end up with anything useful.

True. I think most people can benefit from a bit of this at least. Ie. Speaking of software engineering, at work our 10% time is for us to do as we please. A lot of good things come from that. Maybe 50% time would be too much for most though. Google's 20% is probably the maximum I'd opt for if I were a CEO.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#110

Post by ryandrake »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #63
Netcob wrote: post #44

Goal-oriented work, creativity and motivation definitely have a difficult relationship. In programming, I learn the most things simply by experimenting at home on my own. I'm thinking about switching jobs, so I wanted to learn some new frameworks and concepts to help with that, and I decided to make my personal projects a bit more "professional". Use continuous integration, focus more on web stuff, build and automati…

There is a sweet spot somewhere between the extreme of not using pre-built tools and drowning in them. I've been following a similar path: automation and testing give me certainty and peace of mind when I'm working on bigger teams, so they should also improve my personal projects, right? Well, the difference is that my personal projects are used only by me in limited ways, and I also don't have to worry that someone…

Every third party tool (or library dependency, by the way) is something that will have to be well understood, maintained and fixed when broken. Which is why I try to avoid them for the most part in my personal and work projects.

When someone at work says "Hey, lets just use Xyz package I found online! It does just what we want!" you need to ask: Who fixes it when it causes a problem that stops us from shipping? Who does the security audit? What data does it collect, and to where does it send that data? What will adding it do to our software's performance? Who decides when to update it to the next version and verifies compatibility? Is its license compatible with our workflow/software?

All of a sudden, people are less excited about that great doodad they found on StackOverflow! I'm always troubled by the cavalier attitude about relying on external tools and library dependencies. Yolo just pull it in! In some cases it might be the right decision, but not always. And, avoiding third party stuff is not always just blind NIH mentality: There are costs to depending on someone else for your project.

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