Is it generally easy for people to get permission from their day job to code on the side, without assigning all rights to the employer?
Code something they would have zero interest in (or would even actively avoid being associated with.)
The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
41–50 of 591 posts
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#42This is excellent advice. Just by doing something, the habit gets created and the longer it gets, the easier it is to get started.
This has literally never worked for me with any habits I've tried intentionally cultivating. I'll pick something and do it every day for several weeks. Then I stop. Am I doing it wrong? Am I just weird that I can't seem to form good habits? I sincerely think I wouldn't remember to brush my teeth in the morning if my mouth didn't feel so gross, and I've been doing that every morning for over 30 years!
I recommend checking out Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. He runs the Stanford Behavior Design Lab (previously known as persuasive tech lab). One takeaway from that book that might be relevant to you is that we tend to repeat actions that are rewarding in some way, so if you can think of ways to engineer reward into whatever activities you want to repeat, you have a higher likelihood of doing them.
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#43This is excellent advice. Just by doing something, the habit gets created and the longer it gets, the easier it is to get started.
This has literally never worked for me with any habits I've tried intentionally cultivating. I'll pick something and do it every day for several weeks. Then I stop. Am I doing it wrong? Am I just weird that I can't seem to form good habits? I sincerely think I wouldn't remember to brush my teeth in the morning if my mouth didn't feel so gross, and I've been doing that every morning for over 30 years!
i think if you truly hate doing something, it can almost never become a habit, unless you can somehow shove tiny things you really love into it to dilute your hatred for said thing. for instance, i love the act of going outside to buy a cup of coffee. little prep rituals like that can help.
but the main question is: if you truly hate something, why are you trying to make it a habit in the first place? listen to your mind/body. i HATE working out, specifically i despise HIIT workouts like those one hour classes of nonstop go go go go go. but turns out that i love strength training (i.e lifting weights). both sort of get the job done in terms of getting your body into healthier shape, so i just choose what actually brings me more joy. no need to force yourself to go through miserable situations just because society and everyone else says "you have to do this to be smart, or fit, or more productive, etc"
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#44This is excellent advice. Just by doing something, the habit gets created and the longer it gets, the easier it is to get started.
This has literally never worked for me with any habits I've tried intentionally cultivating. I'll pick something and do it every day for several weeks. Then I stop. Am I doing it wrong? Am I just weird that I can't seem to form good habits? I sincerely think I wouldn't remember to brush my teeth in the morning if my mouth didn't feel so gross, and I've been doing that every morning for over 30 years!
For me, doing something literally every day (often) doesn't seem necessary. Rather, for something like various work-related writing I do, it's more about keeping some sort of cadence so that I don't wake up some morning, realize it's been a month, and go "well, one more day won't make a difference."
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#45This is excellent advice. Just by doing something, the habit gets created and the longer it gets, the easier it is to get started.
This has literally never worked for me with any habits I've tried intentionally cultivating. I'll pick something and do it every day for several weeks. Then I stop. Am I doing it wrong? Am I just weird that I can't seem to form good habits? I sincerely think I wouldn't remember to brush my teeth in the morning if my mouth didn't feel so gross, and I've been doing that every morning for over 30 years!
try something like ticking off/writing down your successfull tries eg in a calendar or a (bullet) journal. helps to keep yourself committed to it, as you probably do not want to break your already created streak.
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#46I'm taking a course on how to build and grow a YouTube channel. The main advice they give is "just commit to making a video once a week, every week, for 2 years, and you're life will change." It's a tautology, no guarantees on how well your channel will do, but it's such a simple idea, and nice motivator to build momentum and keep going.
The Matt D’Avella course?
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#47I like the advice but it always seems to backfire for me. I started jogging everyday. Maybe 2 or 3km. But recently I struggle to do 500m a day. Same with programming. I'll start with a few good days but then it devolves to opening an editor, writing a comment or one line then closing it straight after.
It's important to self-motivation to not beat yourself up over these "bad days." For example, without these bad days, you have nothing to contrast with the "good days," so it's possible it makes you appreciate those times more. It can also give you insight into what produces a good or bad day for you, personally, if you start to monitor the circumstances around good and bad days in terms of how much sleep you get, your diet, general mood/feelings, etc.
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#48I like the advice but it always seems to backfire for me. I started jogging everyday. Maybe 2 or 3km. But recently I struggle to do 500m a day. Same with programming. I'll start with a few good days but then it devolves to opening an editor, writing a comment or one line then closing it straight after.
Physical exercise is an exception because the body needs rest. The "just show up" goal with exercise is to begin with 3x a week and then gradually increase that as your body grows stronger.
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#49Is it generally easy for people to get permission from their day job to code on the side, without assigning all rights to the employer?
Don't ask for permission if you can get away with begging for forgiveness ;)
I'm not sure if that's good advise in this case. The case where you don't get forgiveness in this case might mean that you put a ton of work into something and now much of it is owned by someone else.
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#50Very helpful learnings, looking forward to seeing TypeSense grow!