101–110 of 236 posts
What worked for me is getting into the most stupid internet arguments possible.
The dread associated with seeing the notification indicator show new replies is keeping me off Facebook for now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 to this. Getting a reMarkable has improved my “Actually read interesting papers” metric by infinite%. I went from bookmark and forget to reading at least 1 paper per week on average. Turns out published academic papers, even the bad ones, are infinitely better than even the most insightful twitter threads. Years ago I replaced podcasts with audiobooks for long runs. Podcasts started feeling too short. That’s been…
How easy is it to get papers on? Do you email the PDFs or similar?
There’s even a chrome extension that lets you click a button and the page shows up on the tablet in epub form (which unfortunately doesn’t do images). You have to print-to-pdf then dump into the app to get a webpage with images onto the tablet. That part’s kind of annoying, but many articles work just fine as epub.
I've injected some intentional friction into an otherwise compulsive habit, which opens up the opportunity to redirect that behavior. It's been very a helpful switch so far.
Extremely unpopular opinion from a software engineer on a tech forum but: mental health is as far away from the Internet as possible. The more you can integrate the slower pace of nature and natural life, the better your mental health. Your physical presence is optimised for long days of doing fuck all, sitting in the grass, waiting for a deer to pass by. Still struggling with this, but my long term life goal is livi…
For example, in an RPG game when I find a powerful 1-time use item - I use it as soon as I can.
There are many factors to optimal decision making, and optimized results are just 1 factor. Games help me explore trade-offs with quick vs long decisions, side effects of over planning, stress and panic effects on decisions, etc.
It carries over into the rest of my life, even work, where I am better able to manage things, like diminishing returns on my efforts, in ways that are very personal to me and my natural tendencies.
They've given me a way to be more curious about the natural world around me and get me out of the house and actively engaged in my environment.
It's a bit like an educational alternative to Pokemon Go.
* Anki * Duolingo Now Duolingo is gamified so you need to ignore those aspects. If you don't feel like studying today, then don't let the Streak stress you. What is nice about Doulingo is that you can actually skip a day or two and pay with "gems" to keep your streak. The gems are earned when actually studying.
I like Clozemaster a lot and I don't think it sends any notifications by default unless you opt into a once-daily study reminder.
Anki - jam everything into here. Various work facts, chess mate in X move puzzles, watched movie plots, every time I make a mistake I add it, etc. BrainHQ - train your brain every day, get sharper. I found out about it after reading that Tom Brady uses it to be a better QB. After using it for a couple weeks I could notice a difference.
Calibre, for me - And then choice books to read. Finished quite a few in the last 6 months, topics ranging from Linux internals, to philosophy, to financial management, to health... I choose to invest my electronic time in learning more skills or relationships in why something seems to be the way it is. Recent kick has been practicing the Roman Trivium, then I will tackle the Quadrivium. And I use an Amazon Fire that…
[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.readera&hl...
* SnoreLab & SnoreGym. My partner told me I was snoring and waking her up. Well, this app made it easy to collect data on that and then perform experiments in how to reduce my snoring. I now have a pretty great regiment and get a lot better sleep.
* LoseIt! A calorie tracker with a great library of foods. You can also track your weight and the premium subscription lets you track a lot more like body fat percentage (you'll need to get this professionally measured), water intake, and a lot more. You could do this yourself, but there are a lot of convenience features like creating recipes, seeing graphs of your weight overtime and getting estimates of how long it will take you to reach your goals, given your behaviors. I've used it multiple times during different periods of weight loss, so it has years of my weight history in it.
* SoundHound + Shazam. "What's this song? I love it!" Well now you know what it is and it's in your library. beautiful.
* Music, podcast, and audiobook apps. What's not to love?
* YouCut video editor. Got a little time and want to be creative? Combine with some other video effect apps and some of your own video or content downloaded from Reddit (I find I can download anything when I visit in browser) and you've got a nice little craft.
* Stellarium. I want to use this one more than I do. It's an AR star map. You calibrate it and then it shows you where in 3D the Planets and constellations are. As a city dweller I feel really disconnected from the night sky, so I downloaded this one.
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I will say that specifically on the toilet I have challenged myself to write instead of consume. Write what? Anything. Just write more. Open up an email to myself and... start writing.