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Piano and coding. One pays the bills, but I love both. I learned to play piano and currently play through sheet music. I use MuseScore and can play most "normal" music at roughly 70-80% tempo just sight reading. Then I supplement that with classical music for longer, more difficult pieces.
I have a feeling that being earnest might be the actual "unlock" that unlocks everything else. A meta unlock if you will.
For the longest time in my life, I was very good at things but because of that I sort of never trained or practiced anything earnestly.
I hit my ceiling when I jumped into entrepreneurship and quickly found out that my skills which helped me with my career weren't enough.
I tried and tried for almost five years but nothing helped till the time I took a hard look at myself and figured out I was sort of skating through life. This is especially troublesome if you are above average in intelligence.
The only way to get my business of the ground and make it what I wanted it to be was for me to develop the skill of being earnest and take things from there.
Last year I had profits of $4 million.
I didn't read any books per se, it was more of taking an honest look at myself and trying to get to the root of why I was stuck.
I started creating flashcards when I began studying spanish for my wife. --- a very common introduction to flashcards is via language learning.
But these days I put anything into a card that I feel is useful. It could be an actual event (like recently) with the russian attempted putsch. I might create a card like:
----
On {{c1::June 2023}}, {{c2::Yevgeny Prigozhin}} the leader of {{c3::Wagner}} group staged a rebellion by marching his troups towards Moscow after taking {{c4::Rostov-on-don}}.
Within hours a treaty was brokered by {{c5::Belarus}} president {{c6::Alexander Lukashenko}}
----
these facts are all salient after reading about such an important event, in the moment. But now when I talk about this event years from now, it will spring to mind. I will also be forced to think about it from time to time, and remember the crazy (big) things that happened.
I'll also use flashcards these days to study a new API, or learn a domain model in a new company.
Important is to prune and actively delete cards that no longer make sense. So I suppose the skill is realizing how to use anki. It is a bit of a living entity.
It's a habit/skill I've honed for over 10 years now.
Some recommended reading for those wanting to add flashcards into their lives.
1. https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics
2. http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
3. https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/
4. https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-of-formulatin...
Piano and coding. One pays the bills, but I love both. I learned to play piano and currently play through sheet music. I use MuseScore and can play most "normal" music at roughly 70-80% tempo just sight reading. Then I supplement that with classical music for longer, more difficult pieces.
Plot twist would be that it is Piano actually paying the bills
I studied telecoms engineering and after graduating focused mainly in HW design and signal processing. I used to dislike options like web development that used to employ many people.
Years later I thought of creating my website as a hobby. Now I use wordpress, so I am perfectly aware I am not doing anything complicated. It is something simple you can just do reading internet sources. But the tasks of designing the website, and writing technical stuff in the blog, makes me feel good. It helps you a lot to organise your mind and your ideas to transmit concepts.
During the pandemic I wanted to see what the process is really like for a language that I had no prior experience in. Turns out the entire popular consumer facing industry for this sort’ve thing doesn’t help for anything but tourist phrases (i.e Duolingo).
It took a lot of time and determination to put in the regular exposure every single day to train my ear, as well as 2-3 lessons on the internet every week for the last 2.5 years, but at this point I feel comfortable en disant que je parle français couramment.
Not ultimately that useful in the grand scheme of things being American, but it sure does feel nice to accomplish a goal!
Learning French despite not living in a Francophone country. During the pandemic I wanted to see what the process is really like for a language that I had no prior experience in. Turns out the entire popular consumer facing industry for this sort’ve thing doesn’t help for anything but tourist phrases (i.e Duolingo). It took a lot of time and determination to put in the regular exposure every single day to train my ea…
A daily anki habit. The habit to check my cards, but also to add new ones. It's perhaps not a skill exactly, but it feels like a superpower nonetheless. I started creating flashcards when I began studying spanish for my wife. --- a very common introduction to flashcards is via language learning. But these days I put anything into a card that I feel is useful. It could be an actual event (like recently) with the russi…
Out of curiosity how many cards are you re/viewing per day?